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ST.  MARY 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE 


ALSO 

A JOY  FOREVER 
OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US 
INAUGURAL  ADDRESS 

MODERN  PAINTERS 

VOLUME  I— OF  GENERAL  PRINCIPLES  AND  OF  TRUTH 


JOHN  RUSKIN,  M.A. 

AUTHOR  OP  “ THE  SEVEN  LAMPS  OP  ARCHITECTURE,4’  “THE  CROWN  OP  WILD  OLIVV 
“SESAME  AND  LILIES,”  ETC, 


BOSTON 

ALDINE  BOOK  PUBLISHING  CO. 

PUBLISHERS 


V 


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CONTENTS 


LAWS  OF  FE'SOLE. 

CHAPTER 

Preface  - 

I.  All  great  art  is  praise  - 

II.  The  three  divisions  of  the  art  of  Painting 

III.  First  exercise  in  right  lines,  the  quartering  of  St. 
George’s  Shield  - 

IV  First  exercise  in  curves.  The  circle 

V.  Of  elementary  form  - 

VI.  Of  elementary  organic  structure 

VII.  Of  the  twelve  Zodiacal  colors 

VIII.  Of  the  relation  of  color  to  outline 
IX.  Of  Map  drawing  ..... 

X.  Of  Light  and  Shade  - 

A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


Preface 


LECTURE  I. 


The  discovery  and  application  of  art 

LECTURE  II. 

The  accumulation  and  distribution  of  art 


PAGE 

5 

II 

*5 

22 

27 

37 

48 

64 

79 

94 

116 

139 

141 

176 


Addenda 


PAGE 


■ ■ * * . 219 

Education  in  Art  251 

Remarks  addressed  to  the  Mansfield  Art  Night  Class, 

October  14,  1873  - 259 

Social  Policy.  Based  on  natural  selection  - • • 264 

OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 

Preface  .......  275 

CHAPTER 

I.  By  the  Rivers  of  Waters  ....  279 

Notes  to  Chapter  I.  - - - • - 299 

II.  Under  the  Drachenfels  ....  304 

III.  The  Lion  Tamer  .....  333 

IV.  Interpretations  ......  362 


INAUGURAL  ADDRESS 

Delivered  at  the  Cambridge  School  of  Art,  October 

29th,  1858,  * - « • - • 415 


LIST  OF  PLATES 


LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 

St.  Mary  ......  Frontispiece 


PLATE 

I. 

The  Two  Shields 

. 

• 

PAGE 

22 

II. 

Construction  for  placing  the  Honor  points 

• 

24 

III. 

Primal  Groups  of  the  Circle 

- 

• 

39 

IV. 

Primal  Groups  of  Foils  with  Arc  Centres 

• 

48 

V. 

Decorative  Plumage.— i Peacock 

- 

- 

62 

VI. 

Black  Sheep’s  Trotters.  Pen  outline  with  single  wash 

63 

VII. 

Landscape  outline  with  the  Lead 

• 

- 

86 

VIII. 

Pen  outline  with  advanced  shade 

- 

- 

89 

IX. 

Perspective  of  First  Geometry 

- 

• 

97 

X. 

Appellavitque  Lucem  Diem  et  Tenebras  Noctem 

117 

XI. 

Study  with  the  Lead  and  Single 
Herb.— Robert 

Tint.  Leaf  of 

129 

XII. 

Light  and  Shade  with  refusal  of 
vault  of  Scarlet  Geranium 

color. 

Petal- 

130 

OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US. 

I. 

The  Dynasties  of  France 

- 

. 

279 

II. 

The  Bible  of  Amiens.  Northern 
Restoration 

Porch 

BEFORE 

304 

III. 

Amiens— Jour  des  Trespasses,  1880 

. 

- 

322 

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THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE 

A FAMILIAR  TREATISE  ON  THE  ELEMENTARY  PRINCIPLES  AND 
PRACTICE  OF  DRAWING  AND  PAINTING,  AS  DETER- 
MINED BY  THE  TUSCAN  MASTERS 


PREFACE. 


The  publication  of  this  book  has  been  delayed  by  what 
seemed  to  me  vexatious  accident,  or  (on  my  own  part)  un- 
accountable slowness  in  work  : but  the  delay  thus  enforced 
has  enabled  me  to  bring  the  whole  into  a form  which  I do  not 
think  there  will  be  any  reason  afterwards  to  modify  in  any 
important  particular,  containing  a system  of  instruction  in  art 
generally  applicable  in  the  education  of  gentlemen  ; and  se- 
curely elementary  in  that  of  professional  artists.  It  has  been 
made  as  simple  as  I can  in  expression,  and  is  specially  ad- 
dressed, in  the  main  teaching  of  it,  to  young  people  (extend- 
ing the  range  of  that  term  to  include  students  in  our  univer- 
sities) ; and  it  will  be  so  addressed  to  them,  that  if  they  have 
not  the  advantage  of  being  near  a master,  they  may  teach 
themselves,  by  careful  reading,  what  is  essential  to  their  prog- 
ress. But  I have  added  always  to  such  initial  principles, 
those  which  it  is  desirable  to  state  for  the  guidance  of  ad- 
vanced scholars,  or  the  explanation  of  the  practice  of  exemplary 
masters. 

The  exercises  given  in  this  book,  when  their  series  is  com- 
pleted, will  form  a code  of  practice  which  may  advisably  be 
rendered  imperative  on  the  youth  of  both  sexes  who  show  dis- 
position for  drawing.  In  general,  youths  and  girls  who  do 
not  wish  to  draw  should  not  be  compelled  to  draw;  but  when 
natural  disposition  exists,  strong  enough  to  render  wholesome 
discipline  endurable  with  patience,  every  well-trained  youth 
and  girl  ought  to  be  taught  the  elements  of  drawing,  as  of 
music,  early,  and  accurately. 

To  teach  them  inaccurately  is  indeed,  strictly  speaking,  not 
to  teach  them  at  all ; or  worse  than  that,  to  prevent  the  possi- 


6 


PREFACE. 


bility  of  their  ever  being  taught.  The  ordinary  methods  of 
water-color  sketching,  chalk  drawing,  and  the  like,  now  so 
widely  taught  by  second-rate  masters,  simply  prevent  the 
pupil  from  ever  understanding  the  qualities  of  great  art, 
through  the  whole  of  his  after-life. 

It  will  be  found  also  that  the  system  of  practice  here  pro- 
posed  differs  in  many  points,  and  in  some  is  directly  adverse, 
to  that  which  has  been  for  some  years  instituted  in  our  public 
schools  of  art.  It  might  be  supposed  that  this  contrariety  was 
capricious  or  presumptuous,  unless  I gave  my  reasons  for  it, 
by  specifying  the  errors  of  the  existing  popular  system. 

The  first  error  in  that  system  is  the  forbidding  accuracy  of 
measurement,  and  enforcing  the  practice  of  guessing  at  the 
size  of  objects.  Now  it  is  indeed  often  well  to  outline  at  first 
by  the  eye,  and  afterwards  to  correct  the  drawing  by  measure- 
ment ; but  under  the  present  method,  the  student  finishes  his 
inaccurate  drawing  to  the  end,  and  his  mind  is  thus,  during 
the  whole  progress  of  his  work,  accustomed  to  falseness  in 
every  contour.  Such  a practice  is  not  to  be  characterized  as 
merely  harmful, — it  is  ruinous.  No  student  who  has  sustained 
the  injury  of  being  thus  accustomed  to  false  contours,  can 
ever  recover  precision  of  sight.  Nor  is  this  all : he  cannot  so 
much  as  attain  to  the  first  conditions  of  art  judgment.  For  a 
fine  work  of  art  differs  from  a vulgar  one  by  subtleties  of  line 
which  the  most  perfect  measurement  is  not,  alone,  delicate 
enough  to  detect ; but  to  which  precision  of  attempted  meas- 
urement directs  the  attention  ; while  the  security  of  boundaries, 
within  which  maximum  error  must  be  restrained,  enables  the 
hand  gradually  to  approach  the  perfectness  which  instruments 
cannot.  Gradually,  the  mind  then  becomes  conscious  of  the 
beauty  which,  even  after  this  honest  effort,  remains  inimitable; 
and  the  faculty  of  discrimination  increases  alike  through  fail- 
ure and  success.  But  when  the  true  contours  are  voluntarily 
and  habitually  departed  from,  the  essential  qualities  of  every 
beautiful  form  are  necessarily  lost,  and  the  student  remains 
forever  unaware  of  their  existence. 

The  second  error  in  the  existing  system  is  the  enforcement 
of  the  execution  of  finished  drawings  in  light  and  shade,  be- 


PREFACE. 


7 


fore  the  student  has  acquired  delicacy  of  sight  enough  to  ob- 
serve their  gradations.  It  requires  the  most  careful  and 
patient  teaching  to  develop  this  faculty ; and  it  can  only  be 
developed  at  all  by  rapid  and  various  practice  from  natural 
objects,  during  which  the  attention  of  the  student  must  be 
directed  only  to  the  facts  of  the  shadows  themselves,  and  not 
at  all  arrested  on  methods  of  producing  them.  He  may  even 
be  allowed  to  produce  them  as  he  likes,  or  as  he  can  ; the 
thing  required  of  him  being  only  that  the  shade  be  of  the 
right  darkness,  of  the  right  shape,  and  in  the  right  relation  to 
other  shades  round  it ; and  not  at  all  that  it  shall  be  prettily 
cross-hatched,  or  deceptively  transparent.  But  at  present,  the 
only  virtues  required  in  shadow  are  that  it  shall  be  pretty  in 
texture  and  picturesquely  effective  ; and  it  is  not  thought  of 
the  smallest  consequence  that  it  should  be  in  the  right  place, 
or  of  the  right  depth.  And  the  consequence  is  that  the  student 
remains,  when  he  becomes  a painter,  a mere  manufacturer  of 
conventional  shadows  of  agreeable  texture,  and  to  the  end  of 
his  life  incapable  of  perceiving  the  conditions  of  the  simplest 
natural  passage  of  chiaroscuro. 

The  third  error  in  the  existing  code,  and  in  ultimately  de- 
structive power,  the  worst,  is  the  construction  of  entirely  sym- 
metrical or  balanced  forms  for  exercises  in  ornamental  design; 
whereas  every  beautiful  form  in  this  world,  is  varied  in  the 
minutise  of  the  balanced  sides.  Place  the  most  beautiful  of 
human  forms  in  exact  symmetry  of  position,  and  curl  the  hair 
into  equal  curls  on  both  sides,  and  it  will  become  ridiculous, 
or  monstrous.  Nor  can  any  law  of  beauty  be  nobly  observed 
without  occasional  wilfulness  of  violation. 

The  moral  effect  of  these  monstrous  conditions  of  ornament 
on  the  mind  of  the  modern  designer  is  very  singular.  I have 
found,  in  past  experience  in  the  Working  Men’s  College,  and 
recently  at  Oxford,  that  the  English  student  must  at  present 
of  necessity  be  inclined  to  one  of  two  opposite  errors,  equally 
fatal.  Either  he  will  draw  things  mechanically  and  symmet- 
rically altogether,  and  represent  the  two  sides  of  a leaf,  or  of  a 
plant,  as  if  he  had  cut  them  in  one  profile  out  of  a double 
piece  of  paper  ; or  he  will  dash  and  scrabble  for  effect,  with- 


8 


PREFACE. 


out  obedience  to  law  of  any  kind  : and  I find  the  greatest  dif- 
ficulty, on.  the  one  hand,  in  making  ornamental  draughtsmen 
draw  a leaf  of  any  shape  which  it  could  possibly  have  lived  in  ; 
and,  on  the  other,  in  making  landscape  draughtsmen  draw  a 
leaf  of  any  shape  at  all.  So  that  the  process  by  which  great 
work  is  achieved,  and  by  which  only  it  can  be  achieved,  is  in 
both  directions  antagonistic  to  the  present  English  mind, 
Real  artists  are  absolutely  submissive  to  law,  and  absolutely  at 
ease  in  fancy  ; while  we  are  at  once  wilful  and  dull  ; resolved 
to  have  our  own  way,  but  when  we  have  got  it,  we  cannot  walk 
two  yards  without  holding  by  a railing. 

The  tap-root  of  all  this  mischief  is  in  the  endeavor  to  pro- 
duce some  ability  in  the  student  to  make  money  by  designing 
for  manufacture.  No  student  who  makes  this  his  primary  ob- 
ject will  ever  be  able  to  design  at  all : and  the  very  words 
“ School  of  Design  ” involve  the  profoundest  of  Art  fallacies. 
Drawing  may  be  taught  by  tutors  : but  Design  only  by 
Heaven  ; and  to  every  scholar  who  thinks  to  sell  his  inspira- 
tion, Heaven  refuses  its  help. 

To  what  kind  of  scholar,  and  on  what  conditions,  that  help 
has  been  given  hitherto,  and  may  yet  be  hoped  for,  is  written 
with  unevadable  clearness  in  the  history  of  the  Arts  of  the 
Past.  And  this  book  is  called  “The  Laws  of  Fesole”  because 
the  entire  system  of  possible  Christian  Art  is  founded  on  the 
principles  established  by  Giotto  in  Florence,  he  receiving  them 
from  the  Attic  Greeks  through  Cimabue,  the  last  of  their  dis- 
ciples, and  engrafting  them  on  the  existing  art  of  the  Etrus- 
cans, the  race  from  which  both  his  master  and  he  were  de- 
scended. 

In  the  centre  of  Florence,  the  last  great  work  of  native 
Etruscan  architecture,  her  Baptistery,  and  the  most  perfect 
work  of  Christian  architecture,  her  Campanile,  stand  within  a 
hundred  paces  of  each  other : and  from  the  foot  of  that  Cam- 
panile, the  last  conditions  of  design  which  preceded  the  close 
of  Christian  art  are  seen  in  the  dome  of  Brunelleschi.  Under 
the  term  “ laws  of  Fesole,”  therefore,  may  be  most  strictly  and 
accurately  arranged  every  principle  of  art,  practised  at  its  pur- 
est source,  from  the  twelfth  to  the  fifteenth  century  inclusive. 


PREFACE 


9 


And  the  purpose  of  this  book  is  to  teach  our  English  students 
of  art  the  elements  of  these  Christian  laws,  as  distinguished 
from  the  Infidel  laws  of  the  spuriously  classic  school,  under 
which,  of  late,  our  students  have  been  exclusively  trained. 

Nevertheless,  in  this  book  the  art  of  Giotto  and  Angelico  is 
not  taught  because  it  is  Christian,  but  because  it  is  absolutely 
true  and  good  : neither  is  the  Infidel  art  of  Palladio  and  Giulio 
Romano  forbidden  because  it  is  Pagan  ; but  because  it  is  false 
and  bad ; and  has  entirely  destroyed  not  only  our  English 
schools  of  art,  but  all  others  in  which  it  has  ever  been  taught, 
or  trusted  in. 

Whereas  the  methods  of  draughtsmanship  established  by  the 
Florentines,  in  true  fulfilment  of  Etruscan  and  Greek  tradi- 
tion, are  insuperable  in  execution,  and  eternal  in  principle  ; 
and  all  that  I shall  have  occasion  here  to  add  to  them  will  be 
only  such  methods  of  their  application  to  landscape  as  were  not 
needed  in  the  day  of  their  first  invention  ; and  such  explana- 
tion of  their  elementary  practice  as,  in  old  time,  was  given 
orally  by  the  master. 

It  will  not  be  possible  to  give  a sufficient  number  of  exam- 
ples for  advanced  students  (or  on  the  scale  necessary  for  some 
purposes)  within  the  compass  of  this  hand-book  ; and  I shall 
publish  therefore  together  with  it,  as  I can  prepare  them,  en- 
gravings or  lithographs  of  the  examples  in  my  Oxford  schools, 
on  folio  sheets,  sold  separate^.  But  this  hand-book  will  con- 
tain all  that  was  permanently  valuable  in  my  former  “ Elements 
of  Drawing,”  together  with  such  further  guidance  as  my  ob- 
servance of  the  result  of  those  lessons  has  shown  me  to  be 
necessary.  The  work  will  be  completed  in  twelve  numbers, 
each  containing  at  least  two  engravings,  the  whole  forming, 
when  completed,  two  volumes  of  the  ordinary  size  of  my  pub- 
lished works  ; the  first,  treating  mostly  of  drawing,  for  begin- 
ners ; and  the  second,  of  color,  for  advanced  pupils.  I hope 
also  that  I may  prevail  on  the  author  of  the  excellent  little 
treatise  on  Mathematical  Instruments  (Weale’s  Rudimentary 
Series,  No.  82),  to  publish  a lesson-book  with  about  one-fourth 
of  the  contents  of  that  formidably  comprehensive  volume,  and 
in  larger  print,  for  the  use  of  students  of  art ; omitting  there* 


10 


PREFACE . 


from  the  descriptions  of  instruments  useful  only  to  engineers, 
and  without  forty-eight  pages  of  advertisements  at  the  end  of 
it.  Which,  if  I succeed  in  persuading  him  to  do,  I shall  be 
able  to  make  permanent  reference  to  his  pages  for  elementary 
lessons  on  construction. 

Many  other  things  I meant  to  say,  and  advise,  in  this  Pref- 
ace ; but  find  that  were  I to  fulfil  such  intentions,  my  Preface 
would  become  a separate  book,  and  had  better  therefore  end 
itself  forthwith,  only  desiring  the  reader  to  observe,  in  sum, 
that  the  degree  of  success,  and  of  pleasure,  which  he  will  fi- 
nally achieve,  in  these  or  any  other  art  exercises  on  a sound 
foundation,  will  virtually  depend  on  the  degree  in  which  he 
desires  to  understand  the  merit  of  others,  and  to  make  his 
own  talents  permanently  useful.  The  folly  of  most  amateur 
work  is  chiefly  in  its  selfishness,  and  self-contemplation ; it  is 
far  better  not  to  be  able  to  draw  at  all,  than  to  waste  life  in 
the  admiration  of  one’s  own  littlenesses ; — or,  worse,  to  with- 
draw, by  merely  amusing  dexterities,  the  attention  of  other 
persons  from  noble  art.  It  is  impossible  that  the  performance 
of  an  amateur  can  ever  be  otherwise  than  feeble  in  itself  ; and 
the  virtue  of  it  consists  only  in  having  enabled  the  student,  by 
the  effect  of  its  production,  to  form  true  principles  of  judg- 
ment, and  direct  his  limited  powers  to  useful  purposes. 

Brantwood,  31sS  July,  1877. 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


CHAPTEB  I. 

ALL  GREAT  ART  IS  PRAISE. 

1.  The  art  of  man  is  the  expression  of  his  rational  and  dis- 
ciplined delight  in  the  forms  and  laws  of  the  creation  of  which 
he  forms  a part. 

2.  In  all  first  definitions  of  very  great  things,  there  must 
be  some  obscurity  and  want  of  strictness  ; the  attempt  to 
make  them  too  strict  will  only  end  in  wider  obscurity.  We 
may  indeed  express  to  our  friend  the  rational  and  disciplined 
pleasure  we  have  in  a landscape,  yet  not  be  artists : but  it  is 
true,  nevertheless,  that  all  art  is  the  skilful  expression  of  such 
pleasure  ; not  always,  it  may  be,  in  a thing  seen,  but  only  in 
a law  felt ; yet  still,  examined  accurately,  always  in  the  Crea- 
tion, of  which  the  creature  forms  a part ; and  not  in  itself 
merely.  Thus  a lamb  at  play,  rejoicing  in  its  own  life  only,  is 
not  an  artist ; — but  the  lamb’s  shepherd,  carving  the  piece  of 
timber  which  he  lays  for  his  door-lintel  into  beads,  is  express- 
ing, however  unconsciously,  his  pleasure  in  the  laws  of  time, 
measure,  and  order,  by  which  the  earth  moves,  and  the  sun 
abides  in  heaven. 

3.  So  far  as  reason  governs,  or  discipline  restrains,  the  art 
even  of  animals,  it  becomes  human,  in  those  virtues  ; but 
never,  I believe,  perfectly  human,  because  it  never,  so  far  as  I 
have  seen,  expresses  even  an  unconscious  delight  in  divine 
laws.  A nightingale’s  song  is  indeed  exquisitely  divided  ; but 
only,  it  seems  to  me,  as  the  ripples  of  a stream,  by  a law  of 
which  the  waters  and  the  bird  are  alike  unconscious.  The 


12 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


bird  is  conscious  indeed  of  joy  and  love,  which  the  waters  are 
not ; but  (thanks  be  to  God)  joy  and  love  are  not  Arts ; nor 
are  they  limited  to  Humanity.  But  the  love-song  becomes 
Art,  when,  by  reason  and  discipline,  the  singer  has  become 
conscious  of  the  ravishment  in  its  divisions  to  the  lute. 

4.  Farther  to  complete  the  range  of  our  definition,  it  is  to 
be  remembered  that  we  express  our  delight  in  a beautiful  or 
lovely  thing  no  less  by  lament  for  its  loss,  than  gladness  in  its 
presence,  much  art  is  therefore  tragic  or  pensive  ; but  all 
true  art  is  praise.* 

5.  There  is  no  exception  to  this  great  law,  for  even  carica- 
ture is  only  artistic  in  conception  of  the  beauty  of  which  it  ex- 
aggerates the  absence.  Caricature  by  persons  who  cannot  con- 
ceive beauty,  is  monstrous  in  proportion  to  that  dulness  ; and, 
even  to  the  best  artists,  perseverance  in  the  habit  of  it  is  fatal. 

6.  Fix,  then,  this  in  your  mind  as  the  guiding  principle  of 
all  right  practical  labor,  and  source  of  all  healthful  life 
energy, — that  your  art  is  to  be  the  praise  of  something  that 
you  love.  It  may  be  only  the  praise  of  a shell  or  a stone  ; it 
may  be  the  praise  of  a hero  ; it  may  be  the  praise  of  God : 
your  rank  as  a living  creature  is  determined  by  the  height 
and  breadth  of  your  love ; but,  be  you  small  or  great,  what 
healthy  art  is  possible  to  you  must  be  the  expression  of  your 
true  delight  in  a real  thing,  better  than  the  art.  You  may 
think,  perhaps,  that  a bird’s  nest  by  William  Hunt  is  better 
than  a real  bird’s  nest.  We  indeed  pay  a large  sum  for  the 

* As  soon  as  the  artist  forgets  his  function  of  praise  in  that  of  imita- 
tion, his  art  is  lost.  His  business  is  to  give,  by  any  means,  however 
imperfect,  the  idea  of  a beautiful  thing  ; not,  by  any  means,  however 
perfect,  the  realization  of  an  ugly  one.  In  the  early  and  vigorous  days 
of  Art,  she  endeavored  to  praise  the  saints,  though  she  made  but 
awkward  figures  of  them.  Gradually  becoming  able  to  represent  the 
human  body  with  accuracy,  she  pleased  herself  greatly  at  first  in  this 
new  power,  and  for  about  a century  decorated  all  her  buildings  with 
human  bodies  in  different  positions.  But  there  was  nothing  to  be 
praised  in  persons  who  had  no  other  virtue  than  that  of  possessing 
bodies,  and  no  other  means  of  expression  than  unexpected  manners  of 
crossing  their  legs.  Surprises  of  this  nature  necessarily  have  their 
limits,  and  the  Arts  founded  on  Anatomy  expired  when  the  changes  of 
posture  were  exhausted. 


ALL  GREAT  ART  IS  PRAISE. 


13 


one,  and  scarcely  care  to  look  for,  or  save,  the  other.  But  it 
would  be  better  for  us  that  all  the  pictures  in  the  world  per- 
ished, than  that  the  birds  should  cease  to  build  nests. 

And  it  is  precisely  in  its  expression  of  this  inferiority  that 
the  drawing  itself  becomes  valuable.  It  is  because  a photo- 
graph cannot  condemn  itself,  that  it  is  worthless.  The  glory 
of  a great  picture  is  in  its  shame  ; and  the  charm  of  it,  in 
speaking  the  pleasure  of  a great  heart,  that  there  is  some- 
thing better  than  picture.  Also  it  speaks  with  the  voices  of 
many : the  efforts  of  thousands  dead,  and  their  passions,  are 
in  the  pictures  of  their  children  to-day.  Not  with  the  skill  of 
an  hour,  nor  of  a life,  nor  of  a century,  but  with  the  help  of 
numberless  souls,  a beautiful  thing  must  be  done.  And  the 
obedience,  and  the  understanding,  and  the  pure  natural 
passion,  and  the  perseverance,  in  secula  seculorum,  as  they 
must  be  given  to  produce  a picture,  so  they  must  be  recog- 
nized, that  we  may  perceive  one. 

7.  This  is  the  main  lesson  I have  been  teaching,  so  far  as 
I have  been  able,  through  my  whole  life  : Only  that  picture 
is  noble,  which  is  painted  in  love  of  the  reality.  It  is  a 
law  which  embraces  the  highest  scope  of  Art ; it  is  one  also 
which  guides  in  security  the  first  steps  of  it.  If  you  desire  to 
draw,  that  you  may  represent  something  that  you  care  for, 
you  will  advance  swiftly  and  safely.  If  you  desire  to  draw,  that 
you  may  make  a beautiful  drawing,  you  will  never  make  one. 

8.  And  this  simplicity  of  purpose  is  farther  useful  in  closing 
all  discussions  of  the  respective  grace  or  admirableness  of 
method.  The  best  painting  is  that  which  most  completely  rep- 
resents what  it  undertakes  to  represent,  as  the  best  language 
is  that  which  most  clearly  says  what  it  undertakes  to  say. 

9.  Given  the  materials,  the  limits  of  time,  and  the  condi- 
tions of  place,  there  is  only  one  proper  method  of  painting.* 
And  since,  if  painting  is  to  be  entirely  good,  the  materials  of 

* In  sculpture,  the  materials  are  necessarily  so  varied,  and  the  cir- 
cumstances of  place  so  complex,  that  it  would  seem  like  an  affected 
stretching  of  principle  to  say  there  is  only  one  proper  method  of  sculpt- 
ure : yet  this  is  also  true,  and  any  handling  of  marble  differing  from 
that  of  Greek  workmen  is  inferior  by  such  difference. 


14 


THE  LAWS  OF  F&SOLE. 


it  must  be  the  best  possible,  and  the  conditions  of  time  and 
place  entirely  favorable,  there  is  only  one  manner  of  entirely 
good  painting.  The  so-called  ‘ styles  ’ of  artists  are  either: 
adaptations  to  imperfections  of  material,  or  indications  of  im- 
perfection in  their  own  power,  or  the  knowledge  of  their  dayj 
The  great  painters  are  like  each  other  in  their  strength,  and 
diverse  only  in  weakness. 

10.  The  last  aphorism  is  true  even  with  respect  to  the  dis- 
positions which  induce  the  preference  of  particular  characters 
in  the  subject.  Perfect  art  perceives  and  reflects  the  whole 
of  nature  : imperfect  art  is  fastidious,  and  impertinently 
prefers  and  rejects.  The  foible  of  Correggio  is  grace,  and  of 
Mantegna,  precision : Veronese  is  narrow  in  his  gayety,  Tin- 
toret  in  his  gloom,  and  Turner  in  his  light. 

11.  But,  if  we  know  our  weakness,  it  becomes  our  strength  ; 
and  the  joy  of  every  painter,  by  which  he  is  made  narrow,  is 
also  the  gift  by  which  he  is  made  delightful,  so  long  as  he  is 
modest  in  the  thought  of  his  distinction  from  others,  and  no 
less  severe  in  the  indulgence,  than  careful  in  the  cultivation, 
of  his  proper  instincts.  Recognizing  his  place,  as  but  one 
quaintly- veined  pebble  in  the  various  pavement, — one  richly- 
fused  fragment,  in  the  vitrail  of  life, — he  will  find,  in  his  dis- 
tinctness, his  glory  and  his  use  ; but  destroys  himself  in 
demanding  that  all  men  should  stand  within  his  compass,  or 
see  through  his  color. 

12.  The  differences  in  style  instinctively  caused  by  personal 
character  are  however  of  little  practical  moment,  compared  to 
those  which  are  rationally  adopted,  in  adaptation  to  circum- 
stance. 

Of  these  variously  conventional  and  inferior  modes  of  work, 
we  will  examine  such  as  deserve  note  in  their  proper  place. 
But  we  must  begin  by  learning  the  manner  of  work  which, 
from  the  elements  of  it  to  the  end,  is  completely  right,  and 
common  to  all  the  masters  of  consummate  schools.  In  whom 
these  two  great  conditions  of  excellence  are  always  discernible, 
— that  they  conceive  more  beautiful  things  than  they  can 
paint,  and  desire  only  to  be  praised  in  so  far  as  they  can 
yepresent  these,  for  subjects  of  higher  praising. 


THE  THREE  DIVISIONS  OF  PA1NTINQ. 


15 


CHAPTER  H. 

THE  THREE  DIVISIONS  OF  THE  ART  OF  PAINTING. 

1.  In  order  to  produce  a completely  representative  picture 
of  any  object  on  a flat  surface,  we  must  outline  it,  color  it, 
and  shade  it.  Accordingly,  in  order  to  become  a complete 
artist,  you  must  learn  these  three  following  modes  of  skill 
completely.  First,  how  to  outline  spaces  with  accurate  and 
delicate  lines.  Secondly,  how  to  fill  the  outlined  spaces  with 
accurate,  and  delicately  laid,  color.  Thirdly,  how  to  gradate 
the  colored  spaces,  so  as  to  express,  accurately  and  delicately, 
relations  of  light  and  shade. 

2.  By  the  word  ‘ accurate  ’ in  these  sentences,  I mean  nearly 
the  same  thing  as  if  I had  written  ‘ true  ; 9 but  yet  I mean  a 
little  more  than  verbal  truth : for  in  many  cases,  it  is  possible 
to  give  the  strictest  truth  in  words  without  any  painful  care  ; 
but  it  is  not  possible  to  be  true  in  lines,  without  constant  care 
or  accuracy.  We  may  say,  for  instance,  without  laborious 
attention,  that  the  tower  of  Garisenda  is  a hundred  and  sixty 
feet  high,  and  leans  nine  feet  out  of  thejDerpendicular.  But 
we  could  not  draw  the  line  representing  this  relation  of  nine 
feet  horizontal  to  a hundred  and  sixty  vertical,  without  ex- 
treme care. 

In  other  cases,  even  by  the  strictest  attention,  it  is  not  pos- 
sible to  give  complete  or  strict  truth  in  words.  We  could 
not,  by  any  number  of  words,  describe  the  color  of  a riband 
so  as  to  enable  a mercer  to  match  it  without  seeing  it.  But 
an  4 accurate  ’ colorist  can  convey  the  required  intelligence  at 
once,  with  a tint  on  paper.  Neither  would  it  be  possible,  in 
language,  to  explain  the  difference  in  gradations  of  shade 
which  the  eye  perceives  between  a beautifully  rounded  and 
dimpled  chin,  and  a more  or  less  determinedly  angular  one. 
But  on  the  artist’s  4 accuracy’  in  distinguishing  and  represent* 
ing  their  relative  depths,  not  in  one  feature  only,  but  in  the 
harmony  of  all,  depend  his  powers  of  expressing  the  charm  of 


16 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


beauty,  or  the  force  of  character  ; and  his  means  of  enabling 
us  to  know  Joan  of  Arc  from  Fair  Eosamond. 

3.  Of  these  three  tasks,  outline,  color,  and  shade,  outline, 
in  perfection,  is  the  most  difficult ; but  students  must  begin 
with  that  task,  and  are  masters  when  they  can  see  to  the  end 
of  it,  though  they  never  reach  it. 

To  color  is  easy  if  you  can  see  color  ; and  impossible  if  you 
cannot.* 

To  shade  is  very  difficult  ; and  the  perfections  of  light  and 
shadow  have  been  rendered  by  few  masters  ; but  in  the  degree 
sufficient  for  good  work,  it  is  within  the  reach  of  every  student 
of  fair  capacity  who  takes  pains. 

5.  The  order  in  which  students  usually  learn  these  three 
processes  of  art  is  in  the  inverse  ratio  of  their  difficulty.  They 
begin  with  outline,  proceed  to  shade,  and  conclude  in  color. 
While,  naturally,  any  clever  house  decorator  can  color,  and 
any  patient  Academy  pupil  shade  ; but  Kaphael  at  his  full 
strength  is  plagued  with  his  outline,  and  tries  half  a dozen 
backwards  and  forwards  before  he  pricks  his  chosen  one 
down.f 

Nevertheless,  both  the  other  exercises  should  be  practised 
with  this  of  outline,  from  the  beginning.  We  must  outline 
the  space  which  is  tp  be  filled  with  color,  or  explained  by 
shade  ; but  we  cannot  handle  the  brush  too  soon,  nor  too 
long  continue  the  exercises  of  the  lead  J point.  Every  system 
is  imperfect  which  pays  more  than  a balanced  and  equitable 
attention  to  any  one  of  the  three  skills,  for  all  are  necessary  in 
equal  perfection  to  the  completeness  of  power.  There  will 
indeed  be  found  great  differences  between  the  faculties  of  dif- 
ferent pupils  to  express  themselves  by  one  or  other  of  these 
methods  ; and  the  natural  disposition  to  give  character  by 
delineation,  charm  by  color,  or  force  bjr  shade,  may  be  dis- 

* A great  many  people  do  not  know  green  from  red  ; and  sucli  kind 
of  persons  are  apt  to  feel  it  their  duty  to  write  scientific  treatises  on 
color,  edifying  to  the  art-world. 

f Beautiful  and  true  shade  can  be  produced  by  a machine  fitted  to 
the  surface,  but  no  machine  can  outline. 

X See  explanation  of  term,  p.  28. 


THE  THREE  DIVISIONS  OF  PAINTING. 


17 


creetly  encouraged  by  the  master,  after  moderate  shill  has 
been  attained  in  the  collateral  exercises.  But  the  first  condi- 
tion of  steady  progress  for  every  pupil — no  matter  what  their 
gifts,  or  genius — is  that  they  should  be  taught  to  draw  a calm 
and  true  outline,  entirely  decisive,  and  admitting  no  error 
avoidable  by  patience  and  attention. 

7.  We  will  begin  therefore  with  the  simplest  conceivable 
practice  of  this  skill,  taking 
for  subject  the  two  elementary 
forms  which  the  shepherd  of 
Fesole  gives  us  (Fig.  1),  sup- 
porting the  desk  of  the  master 
of  Geometry. 

You  will  find  the  original 
bas-relief  represented  very  suf- 
ficiently in  the  nineteenth  of 
the  series  of  photographs  from 
the  Tower  of  Giotto,  and  may 
thus  for  yourself  ascertain  the 
accuracy  of  this  outline,  which 
otherwise  you  might  suppose 
careless,  in  that  the  suggested 
square  is  not  a true  one,  having 
two  acute  and  two  obtuse  angles ; nor  is  it  set  upright,  but 
with  the  angle  on  your  right  hand  higher  than  the  opposite 
one,  so  as  partly  to  comply  with  the  slope  of  the  desk.  But 
this  is  one  of  the  first  signs  that  the 
sculpture  is  by  a master’s  hand.  And 
the  first  thing  a modern  restorer  would 
do,  would  be  to  “correct  the  mistake,” 
and  give  you,  instead,  the,  to  him,  more 
satisfactory  arrangement.  (Fig.  2.) 

8.  We  must  not,  however,  permit  our- 
selves, in  the  beginning  of  days,  to  draw 
' inaccurate  squares  ; such  liberty  is  only 
the  final  reward  of  obedience,  and  the 
generous  breaking  of  law,  only  to  be  allowed  to  the  loyal. 

Take  your  compasses,  therefore,  and  your  ruler,  and  smooth 
2 


18 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


paper  over  which  your  pen  will  glide  unchecked.  And  take 
above  all  things  store  of  patience  ; and  then, — but  for  what  is 
to  be  done  then,  the  directions  had  best  be  reserved  to  a fresh 
chapter,  which,  as  it  will  begin  a group  of  exercises  of  which 
you  will  not  at  once  perceive  the  intention,  had  better,  I think, 
be  preceded  by  this  following  series  of  general  aphorisms, 
which  I wrote  for  a young  Italian  painter,  as  containing  what 
was  likely  to  be  most  useful  to  him  in  briefest  form  ; and 
which- for  the  same  reason  I here  give,  before  entering  on  spe- 
cific practice. 


APHORISMS. 

I. 

The  greatest  art  represents  every  thing  with  absolute  sin- 
cerity, as  far  as  it  is  able.  But  it  chooses  the  best  things  to 
represent,  and  it  places  them  in  the  best  order  in  which  they 
can  be  seen.  You  can  only  judge  of  what  is  best , in  process 
of  time,  by  the  bettering  of  your  own  character.  What  is 
true,  you  can  learn  now,  if  you  will. 

ii. 

Make  your  studies  always  of  the  real  size  of  things.  A 
man  is  to  be  drawn  the  size  of  a man,  and  a cherry  the  size 
of  a cherry. 

£ But  I cannot  draw  an  elephant  his  real  size  5 ? 

There  is  no  occasion  for  you  to  draw  an  elephant. 

‘ But  nobody  can  draw  Mont  Blanc  his  real  size  ’ ? 

No.  Therefore  nobody  can  draw  Mont  Blanc  at  all ; but 
only  a distant  view  of  Mont  Blanc.  You  may  also  draw  a dis- 
tant view  of  a man,  and  of  an  elephant,  if  you  like  ; but  you 
must  take  care  that  it  is  seen  to  be  so,  and  not  mistaken  for  a 
drawing  of  a pigmy,  or  a mouse,  near. 

4 But  there  is  a great  deal  of  good  miniature  painting 9 ? 

Yes,  and  a great  deal  of  fine  cameo-cutting.  But  I am  go- 
ing to  teach  you  to  be  a painter,  not  a locket-decorator,  or 
medallist. 


APHORISMS. 


19 


ill. 

Direct  all  your  first  efforts  to  acquire  the  power  of  drawing 
an  absolutely  accurate  outline  of  any  object,  of  its  real  size, 
as  it  appears  at  a distance  of  not  less  than  twelve  feet  from 
the  eye.  All  greatest  art  represents  objects  at  not  less  than 
this  distance  ; because  you  cannot  see  the  full  stature  and  ac- 
tion of  a man  if  you  go  nearer  him.  The  difference  between 
the  appearance  of  any  thing — say  a bird,  fruit,  or  leaf — at  a 
distance  of  twelve  feet  or  more,  and  its  appearance  looked  at 
closely,  is  the  first  difference  also  between  Titian’s  painting  of 
it,  and  a Dutchman’s. 

IV. 

Do  not  think,  by  learning  the  nature  or  structure  of  a 
thing,  that  you  can  learn  to  draw  it.  Anatomy  is  necessary 
in  the  education  of  surgeons  ; botany  in  that  of  apothecaries  ; 
and  geology  in  that  of  miners.  But  none  of  the  three  will 
enable  you  to  draw  a man,  a flower,  or  a mountain.  You  can 
learn  to  do  that  only  by  looking  at  them  ; not  by  cutting  them 
to  pieces.  And  don’t  think  you  can  paint  a peach,  because 
you  know  there’s  a stone  inside  ; nor  a face,  because  you 
know  a skull  is. 

v. 

Next  to  outlining  things  accurately,  of  their  true  form,  you 
must  learn  to  color  them  delicately,  of  their  true  color. 

VI. 

If  you  can  match  a color  accurately,  and  lay  it  delicately, 
you  are  a painter  ; as,  if  you  can  strike  a note  surely,  and  de- 
liver it  clearly,  you  are  a singer.  You  may  then  choose  what 
you  will  paint,  or  what  you  will  sing. 

VII. 

A pea  is  green,  a cherry  red,  and  a blackberry  black,  all 
round. 

VIII. 

Every  light  is  a shade,  compared  to  higher  lights,  till  you 
come  to  the  sun ; and  every  shade  is  a light,  compared  to 


20 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


deeper  shades,  till  you  come  to  the  night.  When,  therefore, 
you  have  outlined  any  space,  you  have  no  reason  to  ask 
whether  it  is  in  light  or  shade,  but  only,  of  what  color  it  is, 
and  to  what  depth  of  that  color. 

IX. 

You  will  be  told  that  shadow  is  gray.  But  Correggio,  when 
he  has  to  shade  with  one  color,  takes  red  chalk. 

x. 

You  will  be  told  that  blue  is  a retiring  color,  because  dis- 
tant mountains  are  blue.  The  sun  setting  behind  them  is 
nevertheless  farther  off,  and  you  must  paint  it  with  red  or 
yellow. 

XI. 

“Please  paint  me  my  white  cat,”  said  little  Imelda. 
“ Child,”  answered  the  Bolognese  Professor,  “ in  the  grand 
school,  all  cats  are  gray.” 

XII. 

Fine  weather  is  pleasant ; but  if  your  picture  is  beautiful, 
people  will  not  ask  whether  the  sun  is  out  or  in. 

XIII. 

When  you  speak  to  your  friend  in  the  street,  you  take  him 
into  the  shade.  When  you  wish  to  think  you  can  speak  to 
him  in  your  picture,  do  the  same. 

XIV. 

Be  economical  in  every  thing,  but  especially  in  candles. 
When  it  is  time  to  light  them,  go  to  bed.  But  the  worst 
■waste  of  them  is  drawing  by  them. 

xv. 

Never,  if  you  can  help  it,  miss  seeing  the  sunset  and  the 
dawn.  And  never,  if  you  can  help  it,  see  any  thing  but 
dreams  between  them. 


APHOJUSMS. 


21 


XVI. 

* A fine  picture,  you  say  ? ’ “ The  finest  possible  ; Si  Jerome, 
and  his  lion,  and  his  arm-chair.  St.  Jerome  was  painted  by 
a saint,  and  the  lion  by  a hunter,  and  the  chair  by  an  up- 
holsterer. ” 

My  compliments.  It  must  be  very  fine  ; but  I do  not  care 
to  see  it. 

XVII. 

* Three  pictures,  you  say  ? and  by  Carpaccio ! 5 “ Yes — St. 

Jerome,  and  his  lion,  and  his  arm-chair.  Which  will  you 
see  ? ” ‘ What  does  it  matter  ? The  one  I can  see  soonest.’ 

XVIII. 

Great  painters  defeat  Death ; the  vile,  adorn  him,  and 
adore. 

XIX. 

If  the  picture  is  beautiful,  copy  it  as  it  is  ; if  ugly,  let  it 
alone,,  Only  Heaven,  and  Death,  know  what  it  was. 

XX. 

* The  King’  has  presented  an  Etruscan  vase,  the  most  beau- 
tiful in  the  world,  to  the  Museum  of  Naples.  What  a pity  I 
cannot  draw  it ! ’ 

In  the  meantime,  the  housemaid  has  broken  a kitchen  tea- 
cup ; let  me  see  if  you  can  draw  one  of  the  pieces. 

XXI. 

When  you  would  do  your  best,  stop,  the  moment  you  begin 
to  feel  difficulty.  Your  drawing  will  be  the  best  you  can  do  ; 
but  you  will  not  be  able  to  do  another  so  good  to-morrow. 

XXII. 

When  you  would  do  better  than  your  best,  put  your  full 
strength  out,  the  moment  you  feel  a difficulty.  You  will 
spoil  your  drawing  to-day  ; but  you  will  do  better  than  your 
to-day’s  best,  to-morrow. 


22 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


xxm. 

“The  enemy  is  too  strong  for  me  to-day,”  said  the  wise 
young  general.  “ I won’t  fight  him  ; but  I won’t  lose  sight  of 
him.” 

XXIV. 

“ I can  do  what  I like  with  my  colors,  now,”  said  the  proud 
young  scholar.  “So  could  I,  at  your  age,”  answered  the 
master  ; “ but  now,  I can  only  do  what  other  people  like.” 


CHAPTER  III. 

FIRST  EXERCISE  IN  RIGHT  LINES,  THE  QUARTERING  OF  ST.  GEORGE’S 

SHIELD. 

1.  Take  your  compasses,*  and  measuring  an  inch  on  your 
ivory  rule,  mark  that  dimension  by  the  two  dots  at  B and  C 
(see  the  uppermost  figure  on  the  left  in  Plate  1),  and  with 
your  black  ruler  draw  a straight  line  between  them,  with  a 
fine  steel  pen  and  common  ink.f  Then  measure  the  same 
length,  of  an  inch,  down  from  B,  as  nearly  perpendicular  as 
you  can,  and  mark  the  point  A ; and  divide  the  height  A B 
into  four  equal  parts  with  the  compasses,  and  mark  them  with 
dots,  drawing  every  dot  as  a neatly  circular  point,  clearly  visi- 
ble. This  last  finesse  will  be  an  essential  part  of  your  draw- 
ing practice  ; it  is  very  irksome  to  draw  such  dots  patiently, 
and  very  difficult  to  draw  them  well. 

Then  mark,  not  now  by  measure,  but  by  eye,  the  remaining 
corner  of  the  square,  D,  and  divide  the  opposite  side  C D,  by 
dots,  opposite  the  others  as  nearly  as  you  can  guess.  Then 
draw  four  level  lines  without  a ruler,  and  without  raising  your 

* I have  not  been  able  yet  to  devise  a quite  simple  and  sufficient  case 
of  drawing  instruments  for  my  schools.  But,  at  all  events,  the  complete 
instrument-case  must  include  the  ivory  scale,  the  black  parallel  rule,  a 
divided  quadrant  (which  I will  give  a drawing  of  when  it  is  wanted), 
one  pair  of  simple  compasses,  and  one  fitted  with  pen  and  pencil. 

f Any  dark  color  that  will  wash  off  their  fingers  may  be  prepared  for 
children, 


The  Two  Shields. 

Schools  of  St.  George.  Elementary  Drawing.  Plate  I. 


V 


FIRST  EXERCISE  IN  RIGHT  LINES. 


23 


pen,  or  stopping,  slowly,  from  dot  to  dot,  across  tlie  square. 
The  four  lines  altogether  should  not  take  less, — but  not  much 
more, — than  a quarter  of  a minute  in  the  drawing,  or  about 
foui’  seconds  each.  Repeat  this  practice  now  and  then,  at 
leisure  minutes,  until  you  have  got  an  approximately  well- 
drawn  group  of  five  lines  ; the  point  D being  successfully  put 
in  accurate  corner  of  the  square.  Then  similarly  divide  the 
lines  A D and  B C,  by  the  eye,  into  four  parts,  and  complete 
the  figure  as  on  the  right  hand  at  the  top  of  Plate  1,  and  test 
it  by  drawing  diagonals  across  it  through  the  corners  of  the 
squares,  till  you  can  draw  it  true. 

2.  Contenting  yourself  for  some  time  with  this  square  of 
sixteen  quarters  for  hand  practice,  draw  also,  with  extremest 
accuracy  of  measurement  possible  to  you,  and  finely  ruled 
lines  such  as  those  in  the  plate,  the  inch  square,  with  its  side 
sometimes  divided  into  three  parts,  sometimes  into  five,  and 
sometimes  into  six,  completing  the  interior  nine,  twenty-five, 
and  thirty-six  squares  with  utmost  precision  ; and  do  not  be 
satisfied  with  these  till  diagonals  afterwards  drawn,  as  in  the 
figure,  pass  precisely  through  the  angles  of  the  square. 

Then,  as  soon  as  you  can  attain  moderate  precision  in  in- 
strumental drawing,  construct  the  central  figure  in  the  plate, 
drawing,  first  the  square ; then,  the  lines  of  the  horizontal 
bar,  from  the  midmost  division  of  the  side  divided  into  five. 
Then  draw  the  curves  of  the  shield,  from  the  uppermost  cor- 
ners of  the  cross-bar,  for  centres  ; then  the  vertical  bar,  also 
one-fifth  of  the  square  in  breadth ; lastly,  find  the  centre  of 
the  square,  and  draw  the  enclosing  circle,  to  test  the  precision 
of  all.  More  advanced  pupils  may  draw  the  inner  line  to 
mark  thickness  of  shield  ; and  lightly  tint  the  cross  with  rose- 
color. 

In  the  lower  part  of  the  plate  is  a first  study  of  a feather, 
for  exercise  later  on  ; it  is  to  be  copied  with  a fine  steel  pen 
and  common  ink,  having  been  so  drawn  with  decisive  and 
visible  lines,  to  form  steadiness  of  hand.* 

* The  original  drawings  for  all  these  plates  will  be  put  in  the  Sheffield 
Xvluseum  ; but  if  health  remains  to  me,  I will  prepare  others  of  the  same 


24 


TEE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


3.  The  feather  is  one  of  the  smallest  from  the  upper  edge 
of  a hen’s  wing ; the  pattern  is  obscure,  and  not  so  well 
adapted  for  practice  as  others  to  be  given  subsequently,  but  I 
like  best  to  begin  with  this,  under  St.  George’s  shield ; and 
whether  you  can  copy  it  or  not,  if  you  have  any  natural  feel- 
ing for  beauty  of  line,  you  will  see,  by  comparing  the  two, 
^that  the  shield  form,  mechanically  constructed,  is  meagre  and 
{stiff ; and  also  that  it  would  be  totally  impossible  to  draw  the 
curves  which  terminate  the  feather  below  by  any  mechanical 
law  ; much  less  the  various  curves  of  its  filaments.  Nor  can 
we  draw  even  so  simple  a form  as  that  of  a shield  beautifully, 
by  instruments.  But  we  may  come  nearer,  by  a more  com- 
plex construction,  to  beautiful  form  ; and  define  at  the  same 
time  the  heraldic  limits  of  the  bearings.  This  finer  method  is 
given  in  Plate  2,  on  a scale  twice  as  large,  the  shield  being 
here  two  inches  wide.  And  it  is  to  be  constructed  as  follows. 

4.  Draw  the  square  A B C D,  two  inches  on  the  side,  with 
its  diagonals  A C,  B D,  and  the  vertical  P Q through  its  cen- 
tre O ; and  observe  that,  henceforward,  I shall  always  use  the 
words  ‘vertical’  for  ‘perpendicular,’  and  ‘level’  for  ‘horizon- 
tal,’ being  shorter,  and  no  less  accurate. 

Divide  O Q,  O P,  each  into  three  equal  parts  by  the  points, 
K,  a ; N,  d. 

Through  a and  d draw  the  level  lines,  cutting  the  diagonals 
in  b,  cy  e,  and  f ; and  produce  b c , cutting  the  sides  of  the 
square  in  m and  n,  as  far  towards  x and  y as  you  see  will  be 
necessary. 

With  centres  m and  n3  and  the  equal  radii  m a,  n a , de- 
scribe semicircles,  cutting  x y in  x and  y.  With  centres  x 
and  y,  and  the  equal  radii  x n,  y m,  describe  arcs  m Y,  n Y, 
cutting  each  other  and  the  line  Q P,  produced,  in  Y. 

The  precision  of  their  concurrence  will  test  your  accuracy 
of  construction. 

5.  The  form  of  shield  B C Y,  thus  obtained,  is  not  a per- 

kind,  only  of  different  subjects,  for  the  other  schools  of  St.  George. 
The  engravings,  by  Mr.  Allen’s  good  skill,  will,  I doubt  not,  be  better 
than  the  originals  for  all  practical  purposes  ; especially  as  my  hand  now 
shakes  more  than  his,  in  small  work. 


V 


• 6 

• a 

• c 

K- 

i 

O 

N* 

• e 

• d 

•f 

Construction  for  Placing  the  Honor  Points. 
Schools  of  St.  George.  Elementary  Drawing,  Plate  II. 


FIRST  EXERCISE  IN  RIGHT  LINES. 


25 


feet  one,  because  no  perfect  form  (in  the  artist’s  sense  of  the 
word I * *  4 perfectness  ’)  can  be  drawn  geometrically  ; but  it  ap- 
proximately represents  the  central  type  of  English  shield. 

It  is  necessary  for  you  at  once  to  learn  the  names  of  the 
nine  points  thus  obtained,  called  ‘ honor-points,’  by  which  the 
arrangement  and  measures  of  bearings  are  determined. 

All  shields  are  considered  heraldically  to  be  square  in  the 
field,  so  that  they  can  be  divided  accurately  into  quarters. 

I am  not  aware  of  any  formally  recognized  geometrical 
method  of  placing  the  honor-points  in  this  field  : that  which  I 
have  here  given  will  be  found  convenient  for  strict  measure- 
ment of  the  proportions  of  bearings. 

6.  Considering  the  square  A B C D as  the  field,  and  re- 
moving from  it  the  lines  of  construction,  the  honor-points  are 
seen  in  their  proper  places,  in  the  lower  part  of  the  plate. 

These  are  their  names,— 


a Middle  Chief 
b Dexter  Chief 
c Sinister  Chief 
K Honor 
O Fesse 
N Numbril 
d Middle  Base 
e Dexter  Base 
f Sinister  Base 


point. 


I have  placed  these  letters,  with  some  trouble,  as  I think 
best  for  help  of  your  memory. 

The  a,  b , c ; d,  e,  / are,  I think,  most  conveniently  placed 
in  upper  and  under  series  : I could  not,  therefore,  put  /for 
the  Fesse  point,  but  the  O will  remind  you  of  it  as  the  sign 
for  a belt  or  girdle.  Then  K will  stand  for  knighthood,  or 
the  honor-point,  and  putting  N for  the  numbril,  which  is 
otherwise  difficult  to  remember,  we  have,  reading  down,  the 

syllable  KON,  the  Teutonic  beginning  of  KONIGr  or  King,  all 

which  may  be  easily  remembered. 


26 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


And  now  look  at  the  first  plate  of  the  large  Oxford  series.* 
It  is  engraved  from  my  free-hand  drawing  in  the  Oxford 
schools  ; and  is  to  be  copied,  as  that  drawing  is  executed, 
with  pencil  and  color. 

In  which  sentence  I find  myself  face  to  face  with  a diffi- 
culty of  expression  which  has  long  teased  me,  and  which  I 
must  now  conclusively,  with  the  reader’s  good  help,  over- 
come. 

7.  In  all  classical  English  writing  on  art,  the  word  ‘pencil,’ 
in  all  classical  French  writing  the  word  ‘ pinceau,’  and  in  all 
classical  Italian  writing  the  word  ‘pennello,’  means  the  paint- 
er’s instrument,  the  brush.f 

It  is  entirely  desirable  to  return,  in  England,  to  this  class- 
ical use  with  constant  accuracy,  and  resolutely  to  call  the 
black-lead  pencil,  the  ‘ lead-crayon  ; ’ or,  for  shortness,  sim- 
ply ‘ the  lead.’  In  this  book  I shall  generally  so  call  it,  saying, 
for  instance,  in  the  case  of  this  diagram,  “ draw  it  first  with 
the  lead.”  ‘ Crayon,’  from  ‘ craie,’  chalk,  I shall  use  instead 
of  ‘ chalk  ; ’ meaning  when  I say  black  crayon,.  common  black 
chalk  ; and  when  I say  white  crayon,  common  white  chalk  ; 
while  I shall  use  indifferently  the  word  ‘ pencil  ’ for  the  in- 
strument whether  of  water-color  or  oil  painting. 

8.  Construct  then  the  whole  of  this  drawing,  Plate  1,  Ox- 
ford series,  first  with  a light  lead  line  ; then  take  an  ordinary  J 
camel’s-hair  pencil,  and  with  free  hand  follow  the  lead  lines 

* See  notice  of  this  series  in  Preface. 

f The  Latin  ‘penicillum’  originally  meant  a ‘little  tail,’  as  of  the 
ermine.  My  friend  Mr.  Alfred  Tylor  informs  me  that  Newton  was  the 
first  to  apply  the  word,  to  light,  meaning  a pointed  group  of  rays. 

% That  is  to  say,  not  a particularly  small  one  ; hut  let  it  be  of  good 
quality.  Under  the  conditions  of  overflowing  wealth  which  reward  our 
national  manufacturing  industry,  I find  a curious  tendency  in  my 
pupils  to  study  economy  especially  in  colors  and  brushes.  Every  now 
and  then  I find  a student  using  a brush  which  bends  up  when  it  touches 
the  paper,  and  remains  in  the  form  of  a fish-hook.  If  I advise  purchase 
of  a better,  he — or  she — saystohne,  “ Can’t  I do  something  with  this  ? ” 
“ Yes, — something,  certainly.  Perhaps  you  may  paste  with  it ; but  you 
can’t  draw.  Suppose  I was  a fencing-master,  and  you  told  me  you 
couldn’t  afford  to  buy  a foil, — would  you  expect  me  to  teach  you  to 
fence  with  a poker  ? ” 


FIRST  EXERCISE  IN  CURVES. 


27 


in  color.  Indian  red  is  the  color  generally  to  be  used  for 
practice,  being  cheap  and  sufficiently  dark,  but  lake  or  car- 
mine work  more  pleasantly  for  a difficult  exercise  like  this. 

9.  In  laying  the  color  lines,  you  may  go  over  and  over 
again,  to  join  them  and  make  them  even,  ns  often  as  you  like, 
but  must  not  thicken  the  thin  ones  ; nor  interrupt  the  thick- 
ness of  the  stronger  outline  so  as  to  confuse  them  at  all  with 
each  other.  Giotto,  Durer,  or  Mantegna,  would  draw  them 
at  once  without  pause  or  visible  error,  as  far  as  the  color  in 
the  pencil  lasted.  Only  two  or  three  years  ago  I could 
nearly  have  done  so  myself,  but  my  hand  now  shakes  a little  ; 
the  drawing  in  the  Oxford  schools  is  however  very  little  re- 
touched over  the  first  line. 

10.  We  will  at  this  point  leave  our  heraldry,  § because  we 
cannot  better  the  form  of  our  shield  until  we  can  draw  lines  of 
more  perfect,  that  is  to  say,  more  varied  and  interesting,  cur- 
vature, for  its  sides.  And  in  order  to  do  this  we  must  learn 
how  to  construct  and  draw  curves  which  cannot  be  drawn 
with  any  mathematical  instrument,  and  yet  whose  course  is 
perfectly  determined. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

FIRST  EXERCISE  IN  CURVES.  THE  CIRCLE. 

1.  Among  the  objects  familiarly  visible  to  us,  and  usually 
regarded  with  sentiments  of  admiration,  few  are  more  class- 
ically representative  of  Giotto’s  second  figure,  inscribed  in  his 

§ Under  the  general  influence  of  Mr.  Gradgrind,  there  has  been  lately 
published  a book  of  “ Heraldry  founded  on  facts”  (The  Pursuivant  of 
Arms, — Chatto  & Windus),  which  is  worth  buying,  for  two  reasons  : the 
first,  that  its  ‘facts’  are  entirely  trustworthy  and  useful  (well  illus- 
trated in  minor  woodcut  also,  and,  many,  very  curious  and  new)  ; the 
second,  that  tlxe  writer’s  total  ignorance  of  art,  and  his  education  among 
vulgar  modernisms,  have  caused  him  to  give  figure  illustrations,  wher- 
ever he  draws  either  man  or  beast,  as  at  pages  62  and  106,  whose  horri- 
ble vulgarity  will  be  of  good  future  service  as  a type  to  us  of  the  maxi- 
mum in  that  particular.  But  the  curves  of  shields  are,  throughout, 
admirably  chosen  and  drawn,  to  the  point  mechanically  possible. 


28 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


square,  than  that  by  common  consent  given  by  civilized  na- 
tions to  their  pieces  of  money.  We  may,  I hope,  under  fort- 
unate augury,  limit  ourselves  at  first  to  the  outline  (as,  in 
music,  young  students  usually  begin  with  the  song)  of  Six- 
pence. 

2.  Supposing  you  fortunate  enough  to  possess  the  coin, 
may  I ask  you  to  lay  it  before  you  on  a stiff  card.  Do  you 
think  it  looks  round  ? It  does  not,  unless  you  look  exactly 
down  on  it.  But  let  us  suppose  you  do  so,  and  have  to  draw 
its  outline  under  that  simple  condition. 

Take  your  pen,  and  do  it  then,  beside  the  sixpence. 

“ You  cannot  ? ” 

Neither  can  I.  Giotto  could,  and  perhaps  after  working 
due  time  under  the  laws  of  Fesole,  you  may  be  able  to  do  it, 
too,  approximately.  If  I were  as  young  as  you,  I should  at 
least  encourage  that  hope.  In  the  meantime  you  must  do  it 
ignominiously,  with  compasses.  Take  your  pen-compasses, 
and  draw  with  them  a circle  the  size  of  a sixpence.* 

3.  When  it  is  done,  you  will  not,  I hope,  be  satisfied  with 
it  as  the  outline  of  a sixpence.*)*  For,  in  the  first  place,  it 

* Not  all  young  students  can  even  manage  tlieir  compasses  ; and  it  is 
well  to  get  over  this  difficulty  with  deliberate  and  immediate  effort. 
Hold  your  compasses  upright,  and  lightly,  by  the  joint  at  the  top ; fix 
one  point  quite  firm,  and  carry  the  other  round  it  any  quantity  of  times 
without  touching  the  paper,  as  if  you  were  spinning  a top  without  quit- 
ting hold  of  it.  The  fingers  have  to  shift  as  the  compasses  revolve  ; 
and,  when  well  practised,  should  do  so  without  stopping,  checking,  or 
accelerating  the  motion  of  the  point.  Practise  for  five  minutes  at  a 
time  till  you  get  skilful  in  this  action,  considering  it  equally  disgraceful 
that  the  fixed  point  of  the  compasses  should  slip,  or  that  it  should  bore 
a hole  in  the  paper.  After  you  are  enough  accustomed  to  the  simple 
mechanism  of  the  revolution,  depress  the  second  point,  and  draw  any 
quantity  of  circles  with  it,  large  and  small,  till  you  can  draw  them 
throughout,  continuousljq  with  perfect  ease. 

f If  any  student  object  to  the  continued  contemplation  of  so  vulgar 
an  object,  I must  pray  him  to  observe  that,  vulgar  as  it  may  be,  the  idea 
of  it  is  contentedly  allowed  to  mingle  with  our  most  romantic  ideals.  I 
find  this  entry  in  my  diary  for  26th  January,  1876 : “To  Crystal  Palace, 
through  squalor  and  rags  of  declining  Dulwich  : very  awful.  In  palace 
afterwards,  with  organ  playing  above  its  rows  of  ghastly  cream-colored 
amphitheatre  seats,  with  ‘SIXPENCE’  in  letters  as  large  as  the  organ- 


FIRST  EXERCISE  IN  CURVES. 


29 


might  just  as  well  stand  for  the  outline  of  the  moon  ; and  in 
the  second,  though  it  is  true,  or  accurate,  in  the  mere  quality 
of  being  a circle,  either  the  space  enclosed  by  the  inner  side 
of  the  black  line  must  be  smaller,  or  that  enclosed  by  the  out- 
side larger,  than  the  area  of  a sixpence.  So  the  closer  you 
can  screw  the  compass-point,  the  better  you  will  be  pleased 
with  your  line  : only  it  must  always  happen  even  with  the 
most  delicate  line,  so  long  as  it  has  thickness  at  all,  that  its 
inner  edge  is  too  small,  or  its  outer  too  large.  It  is  best, 
therefore,  that  the  error  should  be  divided  between  these  two 
excesses,  and  that  the  centre  of  the  line  should  coincide  with 
the  contour  of  the  object.  In  advanced  practice,  however, 
outline  is  properly  to  be  defined  as  the  narrowest  portion 
which  can  be  conveniently  laid  of  a dark  background  round 
an  object  which  is  to  be  relieved  in  light,  or  of  a light  back- 
ground round  an  object  to  be  relieved  in  shade.  The  Vene- 
tians often  leave  their  first  bright  outlines  gleaming  round 
their  dark  figures,  after  the  rest  of  the  background  has  been 
added. 

4.  The  perfect  virtue  of  an  outline,  therefore,  is  to  be  abso- 
lutely accurate  with  its  inner  edge,  the  outer  edge  being  of 
no  consequence.  Thus  the  figures  relieved  in  light  on  black 
Greek  vases  are  first  enclosed  with  a line  of  thick  black  paint 
about  the  eighth  of  an  inch  broad,  afterwards  melted  into  the 
added  background. 

In  dark  outline  on  white  ground,  however,  it  is  often  neces- 
sary to  draw  the  extremities  of  delicate  forms  with  lines  which 
give  the  limit  with  their  outer  instead  of  their  inner  edge  ; 
else  the  features  would  become  too  large.  Beautiful  examples 
of  this  kind  of  work  are  to  be  seen  in  face-drawing,  especially 
of  children,  by  Leech,  and  Du  Maurier,  in  “Punch.” 

Loose  lines,  doubled  or  trebled,  are  sometimes  found  in 
work  by  great,  never  by  the  greatest,  masters  ; but  these  are 

ist, — occupying  the  full  field  of  sight  below  him.  Of  course,  the  names 
of  Mendelssohn,  Orpheus,  Apollo,  Julien,  and  other  great  composers, 
were  painted  somewhere  in  the  panelling  above.  But  the  real  inscrip- 
tion— meant  to  be  practically,  and  therefore  divinely,  instructive — 
was ‘SIXPENCE.’ ’’ 


30 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


only  tentative  ; processes  of  experiment  as  to  tlie  direction  in 
which  the  real  outline  is  to  he  finally  laid. 

5.  The  fineness  of  an  outline  is  of  course  to  he  estimated 
in  relation  to  the  size  of  the  object  it  defines.  A chalk  sketch 
on  a wall  may  he  a very  subtle  outline  of  a large  picture  ; 
though  Holbein  or  Bewick  would  he  able  to  draw  a complete 
figure  within  the  width  of  one  of  its  lines.  And,  for  your  own 
practice,  the  simplest  instrument  is  the  best ; and  the  line 
drawn  by  any  moderately  well-cut  quill  pen,  not  crow  quill, 
but  sacred  goose,  is  the  means  of  all  art  which  you  have  first ' 
to  master ; and  you  may  be  sure  that,  in  the  end,  your  prog- 
ress in  all  the  highest  skill  of  art  will  be  swift  in  proportion 
to  the  patience  with  which  in  the  outset  you  persist  in  exer- 
cises which  will  finally  enable  you  to  draw  with  ease  the  out- 
line of  any  object  of  a moderate  size  (plainly  visible,  be  it 
understood,  and  firmly  terminated),*  with  an  unerring  and 
continuous  pen  line. 

6.  And  observe,  once  for  all,  there  is  never  to  beany  scrawl- 
ing, blotting,  or  splashing,  in  your  work,  with  pen  or  any 
thing  else.  But  especially  with  the  pen,  you  are  to  avoid 
rapid  motion,  because  you  will  be  easily  tempted  to  it.  Be- 
mernber,  therefore,  that  no  line  is  wTell  drawm  unless  you  can 
stop  your  hand  at  any  point  of  it  you  choose.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  motion  must  be  consistent  and  continuous,  other- 
wise the  line  will  not  be  even. 

7.  It  is  not  indeed  possible  to  say  with  precision  liowr  fast 
the  point  may  move,  while  yet  the  eye  and  fingers  retain  per- 
fect attention  and  directing  power  over  it.  I have  seen  a 
great  master’s  hand  flying  over  the  paper  as  fast  as  gnats  over 
a pool  ; and  the  ink  left  by  the  light  grazing  of  it,  so  pale, 
that  it  gathered  into  shade  like  gray  lead  ; and  yet  the  con- 
tours, and  fine  notes  of  character,  seized  with  the  accuracy  of 
Holbein.  But  gift  of  this  kind  is  a sign  of  the  rarest  artistic 
faculty  and  tact : you  need  not  attempt  to  gain  it,  for  if  it  is 
in  you,  and  you  w7ork  continually,  the  powTer  will  come  of 

* By  ‘firmly  terminated,’  I mean  having  an  outline  which  can  be 
drawn,  as  that  or  your  sixpence,  or  a book,  or  a table.  You  can’t  out- 
line a bit  of  cotton  wool,  or  the  fiarne  of  a candle. 


FIRST  EXERCISE  IN  CUR  VES. 


31 


itself  ; and  if  it  is  not  in  you,  will  never  come  ; nor,  even  if 
you  could  win  it,  is  the  attainment  wholly  desirable.  Draw- 
ings thus  executed  are  always  imperfect,  however  beautiful  : 
they  are  out  of  harmony  with  the  general  manner  and  scheme 
of  serviceable  art ; and  always,  so  far  as  I have  observed,  the 
sign  of  some  deficiency  of  earnestness  in  the  worker.  What- 
ever your  faculty  may  be,  deliberate  exercise  will  strengthen 
and  confirm  the  good  of  it ; while,  even  if  your  natural  gift 
for  drawing  be  small,  such  exercise  will  at  least  enable  you  to 
understand  and  admire,  both  in  art  and  nature,  much  that 
was  before  totally  profitless  or  sealed  to  you. 

8.  We  return,  then,  to  our  coin  study.  Now,  if  we  are 
ever  to  draw  a sixpence  in  a real  picture,  we  need  not  think 
that  it  can  always  be  done  by  looking  down  at  it  like  a hawk, 
or  a miser,  about  to  pounce.  We  must  be  able  to  draw  it 
lying  anywhere,  and  seen  from  any  distance. 

So  now  raise  the  card,  with  the  coin  on  it,  slowly  to  the 
level  of  the  eye,  so  as  at  last  to  look  straight  over  its  surface. 
As  you  do  so,  gradually  the  circular  outline  of  it  becomes 
compressed  ; and  between  the  position  in  which  you  look 
down  on  it,  seeing  its  outline  as  a circle,  and  the  position  in 
which  you  look  across  it,  seeing  nothing  but  its  edge,  there  are 
thus  developed  an  infinite  series  of  intermediate  outlines,  which, 
as  they  approach  the  circle,  resemble  that  of  an  egg,  and  as  they 
approach  the  straight  line,  that  of  a rolling-pin  ; but  which  are 
all  accurately  drawn  curves,  called  by  mathematicians  c ellip- 
ses,’ or  curves  that  ‘leave  out  ’ something  ; in  this  first  prac- 
tice you  see  they  leave  out  some  space  of  the  circle  they  are 
derived  from. 

9.  Now,  as  you  can  draw  the  circle  with  compasses,  so  you 
can  draw  any  ellipse  with  a bit  of  thread  and  two  pins.*  But 
as  you  cannot  stick  your  picture  over  with  pins,  nor  find  out, 
for  any  given  ellipse,  without  a long  mathematical  operation, 
where  the  pins  should  go,  or  how  long  the  thread  should  be, 
there  is  now  no  escape  for  you  from  the  necessity  of  drawing 
the  flattened  shape  of  the  sixpence  with  free  hand. 

*No  method  of  drawing  it  by  points  will  give  a finely  continuous 
line,  until  the  hand  is  free  in  passing  through  the  points. 


32 


TEE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


10.  And,  therefore,  that  we  may  have  a little  more  freedom 
.for  it,  we  will  take  a larger,  more  generally  attainable,  and 
more  reverendly  classic  coin  ; namely,  the  ‘ Soldo/  or  solid 
thing,  from  whose  Italian  name,  heroes  who  fight  for  pay 
were  first  called  Soldiers,  or,  in  English,  Pennyworth-men. 
Curiously,  on  taking  one  by  chance  out  of  my  pocket,  it 
proves  to  be  a Double  Obolus  (Charon’s  fare  ! — and  back 
again,  let  us  hope),  or  Ten  Mites,  of  which  two  make  a Five- 
thing*.  Inscribed  to  that  effect  on  one  side — 

AIQBOAON 

10 

AEIITA 

while  the  other  bears  an  effigy  not  quite  so  curly  in  the  hair 
as  an  ancient  Herakles,  written  around  thus, — 

TEQPriOS  A 

BASIAEY2  TON  EAAHNQN 

I lay  this  on  a sheet  of  white  paper  on  the  table  ; and,  the 
image  and  superscription  being,  for  our  perspective  purposes, 
just  now  indifferent,  I will  suppose  you  have  similarly  placed 
a penny  before  you  for  contemplation. 

11.  Take  next  a sheet  of  moderately  thick  note-paper,  and 
folding  down  a piece  of  it  sharply,  cut  out  of  the  folded  edge 
a small  flat  arch,  which,  when  you  open  the  sheet,  will  give 
you  an  oval  aperture,  somewhat  smaller  than  the  penny. 

Holding  the  paper  with  this  opening  in  it  upright,  adjust 
the  opening  to  some  given  point  of  sight,  so  that  you  see  the 
penny  exactly  through  it.  You  can  trim  the  cut  edge  till  it 
fits  exactly,  and  you  will  then  see  the  penny  apparently 
painted  on  the  paper  between  you  and  it,  on  a smaller  scale. 

If  you  make  the  opening  no  larger  than  a grain  of  oats, 
and  hold  the  paper  near  you,  and  the  penny  two  or  three  feet 
back,  you  will  get  a charming  little  image  of  it,  very  pretty 
and  quaint  to  behold  ; and  by  cutting  apertures  of  different 
sizes,  you  will  convince  yourself  that  you  don’t  see  the  penny 


FIRST  EXERCISE  IN  CURVES. 


33 


of  any  given  size,  but  that  you  judge  of  its  actual  size  by 
guessing  at  its  distance,  the  real  image  on  the  retina  of  the 
eye  being  far  smaller  than  the  smallest  hole  you  can  cut  in 
the  paper. 

12.  Now  if,  supposing  you  already  have  some  skill  in  paint- 
ing, you  try  to  produce  an  image  of  the  penny  which  shall 
look  exactly  like  it,  seen  through  any  of  these  openings,  be- 
side the  opening,  }rou  will  soon  feel  how  absurd  it  is  to  make 
the  opening  small,  since  it  is  impossible  to  draw  with  fineness 
enough  quite  to  imitate  the  image  seen  through  any  of  these 
diminished  apertures.  But  if  you  cut  the  opening  only  a 
hair’s-b read tli  less  wide  than  the  coin,  you  may  arrange  the 
paper  close  to  it  by  putting  the  card  and  penny  on  the  edge 
of  a book,  and  then  paint  the  simple  image  of  what  }rou  see 
(penny  only,  mind,  not  the  cast  shadow  of  it),  so  thajt  you 
can’t  tell  the  one  from  the  other  ; and  that  will  be  right,  if 
your  only  object  is  to  paint  the  penny.  It  will  be  right  also 
for  a flower,  or  a fruit,  or  a feather,  or  aught  else  which  you 
are  observing  simply  for  its  own  sake. 

13.  But  it  will  be  natural-history  painting,  not  great  paint- 
er’s painting.  A great  painter  cares  only  to  paint  his  penny 
while  the  steward  gives  it  to  the  laborer,  or  his  twopence 
while  the  Good  Samaritan  gives  it  to  the  host.  And  then  it 
must  be  so  painted  as  you  would  see  it  at  the  distance  where 
you  can  also  see  the  Samaritan. 

14.  Perfectly , however,  at  that  distance.  Not  sketched  or 
slurred,  in  order  to  bring  out  the  solid  Samaritan  in  relief 
from  the  aerial  twopence. 

And  by  being  £ perfectly  ’ painted  at  that  distance,  I mean, 
as  it  would  be  seen  by  the  human  eye  in  the  perfect  power 
of  youth.  That  forever  indescribable  instrument,  aidless,  is 
the  proper  means  of  sight,  and  test  of  all  laws  of  work  which 
bear  upon  aspect  of  things  for  human  beings. 

15.  Having  got  thus  much  of  general  principle  defined,  we 
return  to  our  own  immediate  business,  now  simplified  by  hav- 
ing ascertained  that  our  elliptic  outline  is  to  be  of  the  width 
of  the  penny  proper,  within  a hair’s  breadth,  so  that,  practi- 
cally, we  may  take  accurate  measure  of  the  diameter,  and  on 

3 


34 


THE  LAWS  OF  FJESOLE. 


that  diameter  practise  drawing  ellipses  of  different  degrees 
of  fatness.  If  you  have  a master  to  help  you,  and  see  that 
they  are  well  drawn,  I need  not  give  you  farther  direction  at 
this  stage  ; hut  if  not,  and  we  are  to  go  on  by  ourselves,  we 
must  have  some  more  compass  work  ; which  reserving  for 
next  chapter,  I will  conclude  this  one  with  a few  words  to 
more  advanced  students  on  the  use  of  outline  in  study  from 
nature. 

16.  I.  Lead,  or  silver  point,  outline. 

It  is  the  only  one  capable  of  perfection,  and  the  best  of  all 
means  for  gaining  intellectual  knowledge  of  form.  Of  the 
degrees  in  which  shade  may  be  wisely  united  with  it,  the 
drawings  of  the  figure  in  the  early  Florentine  schools  give 
every  possible  example  : but  the  severe  method  of  engraved 
outline  used  on  Etruscan  metal-wrork  is  the  standard  appointed 
by  the  law’s  of  Fesole.  The  finest  application  of  such  method 
may  be  seen  in  the  Florentine  engravings,  of  which  more  or 
less  perfect  facsimiles  are  given  in  my  “ Ariadne  Florentina.” 
Raphael’s  silver  point  outline,  for  the  figure,  and  Turner’s  lead 
outline  in  landscape,  are  beyond  all  rivalry  in  abstract  of 
graceful  and  essential  fact.  Of  Turner’s  lead  outlines,  exam- 
ples enough  exist  in  the  National  Gallery  to  supply  all  the 
schools  in  England,  when  they  are  properly  distributed.* 

17.  II.  Pen,  or  woodcut,  outline.  The  best  means  of  pri- 
mal study  of  composition,  and  for  giving  vigorous  impression 
to  simple  spectators.  The  woodcuts  of  almost  any  Italian 
books  towards  1500,  most  of  Durer’s  (a), — all  Holbein’s;  but 
especially  those  of  the  ‘ Dance  of  Death  ’ (5),  and  the  etchings 
by  Turner  himself  in  the  c<  Liber  Studiorum,”  are  standards  of 

My  kind  friend  Mr.  Burton  is  now  so  fast  bringing  all  tilings  under 
his  control  into  good  working  order  at  the  National  Gallery,  that  I have 
good  hope,  by  the  help  of  his  influence  with  the  Trustees,  such  distri- 
bution may  be  soon  effected. 


(а)  I have  put  the  complete  series  of  the  life  of  the  Virgin  in  the  St 
George’s  Museum,  Sheffield. 

(б)  First  edition,  also  in  Sheffield  Museum. 


FIRST  EXERCISE  IN  CURVES. '. 


35 


it  (c).  With  a light  wash  of  thin  color  above,  it  is  the  no- 
blest method  of  intellectual  study  of  composition  ; so  em- 
ployed by  all  the  great  Florentine  draughtsmen,  and  by  Man- 
tegna (i d ).  Holbein  and  Turner  carry  the  method  forward 
into  full  chiaroscuro  ; so  also  Sir  Joshua  in  his  first  sketches 
of  pictures  (e). 

18.  III.  Outline  with  the  pencil.  Much  as  I have  worked 
on  illuminated  manuscripts,  I have  never  yet  been  able  to  dis- 
tinguish, clearly,  pencilled  outlines  from  the  penned  rubrics. 
But  I shall  gradually  give  large  examples  from  thirteenth  cen- 
tury work  which  will  be  for  beginners  to  copy  with  the  pen, 
and  for  advanced  pupils  to  follow  with  the  pencil. 

19.  The  following*  notes,  from  the  close  of  one  of  my  Ox- 
ford lectures  on  landscape,  contain  the  greater  part  of  what  it 
is  necessary  farther  to  say  to  advanced  students  * on  this  sub- 
ject 

When  forms,  as  of  trees  or  mountain  edges,  are  so  complex 
that  you  cannot  follow  them  in  detail,  yon  are  to  enclose  them 
with  a careful  outside  limit,  taking  in  their  main  masses.  Sup- 
pose you  have  a map  to  draw  on  a small  scale,  the  kind  of 
outline  which  a good  geographical  draughtsman  gives  to  the 
generalized  capes  and  bays  of  a country,  is  that  by  which  you 
are  to  define  too  complex  masses  in  landscapes. 

An  outline  thus  perfectly  made,  with  absolute  decision,  and 
with  a wash  of  one  color  above  it,  is  the  most  masterly  of  all 

* I find  tliis  book  terribly  difficult  to  arrange  ; for  if  I did  it  quite 
rightly,  I should  make  the  exercises  and  instructions  progressive  and  con- 
secutive ; but  then,  nobody  would  see  the  reason  for  them  till  we  came 
to  the  end  ; and  I am  so  encumbered  with  other  work  that  I think  it  best 
now  to  get  this  done  in  the  way  likeliest  to  make  each  part  immediately 
useful.  Otherwise,  this  chapter  should  have  been  all  about  right  lines 
only,  and  then  we  should  have  had  one  on  the  arrangement  of  right 
lines,  followed  by  curves,  and  arrangement  of  curves. 


(c)  ‘ iEsaeus  and  Hesperie,’  and  ‘ The  Falls  of  the  Reuss,’  in  Sheffield 
Museum. 

( d ) 1 The  Triumph  of  Joseph.’  Florentine  drawing  in  Sheffield  Mu- 
seum. 

fi)  Two,  in  Sheffield  Museum. 


36 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


methods  of  light  and  shade  study,  with  limited  time,  when  the 
forms  of  the  objects  to  be  drawn  are  clear  and  unaffected  by 
mist. 

But  without  any  wash  of  color,  such  an  outline  is  the  most 
valuable  of  all  means  of  obtaining  such  memoranda  of  any 
scene  as  may  explain  to  another  person,  or  record  for  your- 
self, what  is  most  important  in  its  features  ; only  when  it  is 
thus  used,  some  modification  is  admitted  in  its  treatment,  and 
always  some  slight  addition  of  shade  becomes  necessary  in 
order  that  the  outline  may  contain  the  utmost  information 
possible.  Into  this  question  of  added  shade  I shall  proceed 
hereafter. 

20.  For  the  sum  of  present  conclusions  : observe  that  in  all 
drawings  in  which  flat  washes  of  color  are  associated  with 
outline,  the  first  great  point  is  entirely  to  suppress  the  influ- 
ences of  impatience  and  affectation,  so  that  if  you  fail,  you 
may  know  exactly  in  what  the  failure  consists.  Be  sure  that 
you  spread  your  color  as  steadily  as  if  you  were  painting  a 
house  wall,  filling  in  every  spot  of  white  to  the  extremest  cor- 
ner, and  removing  every  grain  of  superfluous  color  in  nook3 
and  along  edges.  Then  when  the  tint  is  dry,  you  will  be  able 
to  say  that  it  is  either  too  warm  or  cold,  paler  or  darker  than 
you  meant  it  to  be.  It  cannot  possibly  come  quite  right  till 
you  have  long  experience  ; only,  let  there  be  no  doubt  in  your 
mind  as  to  the  point  in  which  it  is  wrong  ; and  next  time  you 
will  do  better. 

21.  I cannot  too  strongly,  or  too  often,  warn  you  against 
the  perils  of  affectation.  Sometimes  color  lightly  broken,  or 
boldly  dashed,  will  produce  a far  better  instant  effect  than  a 
quietly  laid  tint ; and  it  looks  so  dexterous,  or  so  powerful,  or  so 
fortunate,  that  you  are  sure  to  find  everybody  liking  your  work 
better  for  its  insolence.  But  never  allow  yourself  in  such  things. 
Efface  at  once  a happy  accident — let  nothing  divert  you  from 
the  purpose  you  began  with — nothing  divert  or  confuse  you 
in  the  course  of  its  attainment ; let  the  utmost  strength  of 
your  work  be  in  its  continence,  and  the  crowning  grace  of  it 
in  serenity. 

And  even  when  you  know  that  time  will  not  permit  you  to 


OF  ELEMENTARY  FORM. \ 


37 


finish,  do  a little  piece  of  jour  drawing  rightly,  rather  than 
the  whole  falsely  : and  let  the  non-completion  consist  either 
in  that  part  of  the  paper  is  left  white,  or  that  only  a founda- 
tion has  been  laid  up  to  a certain  point,  and  the  second  colors 
have  not  gone  on.  Let  your  work  be  a good  outline — or  part 
of  one ; a good  first  tint — or  part  of  one  ; but  not,  in  any 
sense,  a sketch  ; in  no  point,  or  measure,  fluttered,  neglected, 
or  experimental.  In  this  manner  you  will  never  be  in  a state 
of  weak  exultation  at  an  undeserved  triumph  ; neither  will 
you  be  mortified  by  an  inexplicable  failure.  From  the  begin- 
ning you  will  know  that  more  than  moderate  success  is  im- 
possible, and  that  when  you  fall  short  of  that  due  degree,  the 
reason  may  be  ascertained,  and  a lesson  learned.  As  far  as 
my  own  experience  reaches,  the  greater  part  of  the  fatigue  of 
drawing  consists  in  doubt  or  disappointment,  not  in  actual 
effort  or  reasonable  application  of  thought ; and  the  best 
counsels  I have  to  give  you  may  be  summed  in  these — to  be 
constant  to  your  first  purpose,  content  with  the  skill  you  are 
sure  of  commanding,  and  desirous  only  of  the  praises  which 
belong  to  patience  and  discretion. 


CHAPTER  Y. 

OF  ELEMENTARY  FORM. 

1.  In  the  15th  paragraph  of  the  preceding  chapter,  we  were 
obliged  to  leave  the  drawing  of  our  ellipse  till  we  had  done 
some  more  compass  work.  For,  indeed,  all  curves  of  subtle 
nature  must  be  at  first  drawn  through  such  a series  of  points 
as  may  accurately  define  them  ; and  afterwards  without  points, 
by  the  free  hand. 

And  it  is  better  in  first  practice  to  make  these  points  for 
definition  very  distinct  and  large ; and  even  sometimes  to 
consider  them  rather  as  beads  strung  upon  the  line,  as 
if  it  were  a thread,  than  as  mere  points  through  which  it 
passes. 

2.  It  is  wise  to  do  this,  not  only  in  order  that  the  points 


38 


TEE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


themselves  may  be  easily  and  unmistakably  set,  but  because 
all  beautiful  lines  are  beautiful,  or  delightful  to  sight,  in  show - 
ing  the  directions  in  which  material  things  may  be  wisely  arranged , 
or  may  serviceably  move . Thus,  in  Plate  1,  the  curve  which 
terminates  the  hen’s  feather  pleases  me,  and  ought  to  please 
you,  better  than  the  point  of  the  shield,  partly  because  it  ex- 
presses such  relation  between  the  lengths  of  the  filaments  of 
the  plume  as  may  fit  the  feather  to  act  best  upon  the  air,  for 
flight ; or,  in  unison  with  other  such  softly  inlaid  armor,  for 
covering. 

3.  The  first  order  of  arrangement  in  substance  is  that  of 
coherence  into  a globe  ; as  in  a drop  of  water,  in  rain,  and 
dew, — or,  hollow,  in  a bubble  : and  this  same  kind  of  cohe- 
rence takes  place  gradually  in  solid  matter,  forming  spherical 
knots,  or  crystallizations.  Whether  in  dew,  foam,  or  any  other 
minutely  beaded  structure,  the  simple  form  is  always  pleasant 
to  the  human  mind  ; and  the  ‘ pearl  ’ — to  which  the  most  pre- 
cious object  of  human  pursuit  is  likened  by  its  wisest  guide — 
derives  its  delightfulness  merely  from  its  being  of  this  perfect 
form,  constructed  of  a substance  of  lovely  color. 

4.  Then  the  second  orders  of  arrangement  are  those  in 
which  several  beads  or  globes  are  associated  in  groups  under 
definite  laws,  of  which  of  course  the  simplest  is  that  they 
should  set  themselves  together  as  close  as  possible. 

Take,  therefore,  eight  marbles  or  beads*  about  three-quar- 
ters of  an  inch  in  diameter  ; and  place  successively  two,  three, 
four,  etc.,  as  near  as  they  will  go.  You  can  but  let  the  first 
two  touch,  but  the  three  will  form  a triangular  group,  the  four 
a square  one,  and  so  on,  up  to  the  octagon.  These  are  the 
first  general  types  of  all  crystalline  or  inorganic  grouping  : you 
must  know  their  properties  well ; and  therefore  you  must 
draw  them  neatly. 

5.  Draw  first  the  line  an  inch  long,  which  you  have  already 
practised,  and  set  upon  it  five  dots,  two  large  and  three  small, 

* In  St.  George’s  schools,  they  are  to  be  of  pale  rose-colored  or 
amber-colored  quartz,  with  the  prettiest  veins  I can  find  it  bearing  : 
there  are  any  quantity  of  tons  of  rich  stone  ready  for  us,  waste  on  our 
beaches. 


c 


Primal  Groups  of  the  Circle. 

Schools  of  St.  George.  Elementary  Drawing,  Plate  III. 


OF  ELEMENTARY  FORM. 


39 


dividing  it  into  quarter  inches, — A B,  Plate  3.  Then  from 
the  large  dots  as  centres,  through  the  small  ones,  draw  the 
two  circles  touching  each  other,  as  at  C. 

The  triangle,  equal-sided,  each  side  half  an  inch,  and  the 
square,  in  the  same  dimensions,  with  their  dots,  and  their 
groups  of  circles,  are  given  in  succession  in  the  plate  ; and 
you  will  proceed  to  draw  the  pentagon,  hexagon,  heptagon, 
and  octagon  group,  in  the  same  manner,  all  of  them  half  an 
inch  in  the  side.  All  to  be  done  with  the  lead,  free  hand,  cor- 
rected by  test  of  compasses  till  you  get  them  moderately 
right,  and  finally  drawn  over  the  lead  with  common  steel  pen 
and  ink. 

The  degree  of  patience  with  which  you  repeat,  to  perfection, 
this  very  tedious  exercise,  will  be  a wholesome  measure  of 
your  resolution  and  general  moral  temper,  and  the  exercise 
itself  a discipline  at  once  of  temper  and  hand.  On  the  other 
hand,  to  do  it  hurriedly  or  inattentively  is  of  no  use  whatever, 
either  to  mind  or  hand. 

6.  While  you  are  persevering  in  this  exercise,  you  must  also 
construct  the  same  figures  with  your  instruments,  as  delicately 
as  you  can  ; but  complete  them,  as  in  Plate  4,  by  drawing 
semicircles  on  the  sides  of  each  rectilinear  figure  ; and,  with 
the  same  radius,  the  portions  of  circles  which  will  include  the 
angles  of  the  same  figures,  placed  in  a parallel  series,  enclos- 
ing each  figure  finally  in  a circle. 

7.  You  have  thus  the  first  two  leading  groups  of  what  archi- 
tects call  Foils  ; i.e.,  trefoils,  quatrefoils,  cinquefoils,  etc., 
their  French  names  indicating  the  original  dominance  of 
French  design  in  their  architectural  use. 

The  entire  figures  may  be  best  called  ‘Roses,’  the  word 
rose,  or  rose  window,  being  applied  by  the  French  to  the 
richest  groups  of  them.  And  you  are  to  call  the  point  which 
is  the  centre  of  each  entire  figure  the  ‘ Rose-centre.’  The 
arcs,  you  are  to  call  * foils  ; ’ the  centres  of  the  arcs,  c foil- 
centres  ; ’ and  the  small  points  where  the  arcs  meet,  ‘ cusps/ 
from  cuspis,  Latin  for  a point. 

8.  From  the  group  of  circle-segments  thus  constructed,  we 
might  at  once  deduce  the  higher  forms  of  symmetrical  ( or 


40 


THE  LA  WS  OF  FESOLE. 


equally  measured*)  architecture,  aud  of  symmetrical  flowers, 
such  as  the  rose,  or  daisy.  But  it  will  be  better  first,  with 
only  our  simple  groups  of  circles  themselves,  to  examine  the 
laws  which  regulate  forms  not  equally  measured  in  every 
direction. 

In  this  inquiry,  however,  we  should  find  our  marbles  run 
inconveniently  about  the  table : we  will  therefore  take  to  our 
coins  again  : they  will  serve  admirably,  as  long  as  we  keep 
clear  of  light  and  shade.  We  will  at  first  omit  the  dual  and 


trine  groups,  being  too  simple  for  interesting  experiment ; and 
begin  with  Figure  4,  Plate  iii. 

9.  Take,  accordingly,  four  sixpences,  and  lay  then  on  a sheet 
of  paper  in  this  arrangement  (Fig.  3),  as  evenly  square  as  you 
can. 

Now,  lift  one  up  out  of  its  place,  thus  (Fig.  4),  but  still 
keeping  it  in  contact  with  its  next  neighbor,  f 

You  don’t  like  that  arrangement  so  well,  do  you  ? You 
* As  distinguished  from  the  studiously  varied  design,  executed  in  all 
its  curves  with  the  free  hand,  characteristic  of  less  educated  hut  more 
living  schools.  The  south  end  of  the  western  aisle  of  Bolton  Abbey  is 
an  exquisite  example  of  Early  English  of  this  kind. 

f If  you  have  the  book,  compare  the  exercises  in  “ Ethics  of  the  Dust,” 
page  67. 


OF  ELEMENTARY  FORM. 


41 


ought  not  to  like  it  so  well.  It  is  suggestive  of  one  of  the 
sixpences  having  got  “liberty  and  independence.”  It  is  a 
form  of  dissolution. 

Next  push  up  one  of  the  coins  below,  so  as  to  touch  the  one 
already  raised,  as  in  Figure  5. 

You  dislike  this  group  even  more  than  the  last,  I should 
think.  Two  of  the  sixpences  have  got  liberty  and  independ- 
ence now ! Two,  if  referred  to  the  first  quatrefoil ; or,  if  the 
three  upper  ones  are  considered  as  a staggering  trefoil,  three. 


Push  the  lower  one  up  to  join  them,  then  ; Figure  6. 

That  is  a little  more  comfortable,  but  the  whole  figure  seems 
squinting  or  tumbling.  You  can’t  let  it  stay  so  ! 

Put  it  upright,  then  ; Figure  7. 

And  now  you  like  it  as  well  as  the  original  group,  or,  it  may 
be,  even  better.  You  ought  to  like  it  better,  for  it  is  not  only 
as  completely  under  law  as  the  original  group,  but  it  is  under 
two  laws  instead  of  one,  variously  determining  its  height  and 
width.  The  more  laws  any  thing,  or  any  creature,  interprets, 
and  obeys,  the  more  beautiful  it  is  (cseteris  paribus). 

10.  You  find  then,  for  first  conclusion,  that  you  naturally 
like  things  to  be  under  law  ; and,  secondly,  that  your  feeling 


42 


THE  LAWS  OF  FES  OLE. 


of  the  pleasantness  in  a group  of  separate,  (and  not  living,)  or* 
jects,  like  this,  involves  some  reference  to  the  great  law  of  grav- 
ity, which  makes  you  feel  it  desirable  that  things  should  stand 
upright,  unless  they  have  clearly  some  reason  for  stooping. 

It  will,  however,  I should  think,  be  nearly  indifferent  to  you 
whether  you  look  at  Figure  7 as  I have  placed  it,  or  from  the 
side  of  the  page.  Whether  it  is  broad  or  high  will  not  matter, 
so  long  as  it  is  balanced.  But  you  see  the  charm  of  it  is  in- 
creased, in  either  case,  by  inequality  of  dimension,  in  one  di- 


rection or  another ; by  the  introduction,  that  is  to  say,  of 
another  law,  modifying  the  first. 

11.  Next,  let  us  take  fine  sixpences,  which  we  see  wdll  at 
once  fall  into  the  pleasant  equal  arrangement,  Figure  5,  Plate 
iii.  ; but  wTe  will  now  break  up  that,  by  putting  four  together, 
as  in  our  first  quatre-foil  here ; and  the  fifth  on  the  top, 
(Figure  8). 

But  you  feel  this  new  arrangement  awkward.  The  upper- 
most circle  has  no  intelligible  connection  with  the  group  be- 
low, which,  as  a foundation,  would  be  needlessly  large  for  it. 
If  you  turn  the  figure  upside-down,  however,  I think  you  will 
like  it  better  ; for  the  lowest  circle  now  seems  a little  related 


OF  ELEMENTARY  FORM. 


43 


to  the  others,  like  a pendant.  But  the  form  is  still  unsatis- 
factory. 

Take  the  group  in  Figure  7,  above,  then,  and  add  the  fifth 
sixpence  to  the  top  of  that  (Figure  9). 

Are  you  not  better  pleased  ? There  seems  now  a unity  of 


vertical  position  in  three  circles,  and  of  level  position  in  two  ; 
and  you  get  also  some  suggestion  of  a pendant,  or  if  you  turn 
the  page  upside-down,  of  a statant,*  cross. 

If,  however,  you  now  raise  the  two  level  circles,  and  the 

* Clearly,  tin's  Latin  derivative  is  needed  in  English,  besides  our  own 
4 standing  ; ’ to  distinguish,  on  occasion,  a permanently  fixed  ‘ state  ’ of 
anything,  from  a temporary  pause.  Stant,  (as  in  extant,)  would  be 
merely  the  translation  of  ‘standing  so  I assume  a participle  of  the  ob- 
solete ‘ statare  ’ to  connect  the  adopted  word  with  Statina,  (the  goddess,) 
Statue,  and  State. 


44 


THE  LA  WS  OF  FESOLE. 


lowest,  so  as  to  get  the  arrangement  in  Figure  10,  the  result 
is  a quite  balanced  group  ; more  pleasing,  if  I mistake  not, 
than  any  we  have  arrived  at  yet,  because  we  have  here  perfect 
order,  with  an  unequal  succession  of  magnitudes  in  mass  and 
interval,  between  the  outer  circles. 

12.  By  now  gradually  increasing  the  number  of  coins,  we 
can  deduce  a large  variety  of  groups,  more  or  less  pleasing, 
which  you  will  find,  on  the  whole,  throw  themselves  either 
into  garlanded  shapes, — seven,  eight,  and  so  on,  in  a circle, 


with  differences  in  the  intervals  ; — or  into  stellar  shapes,  of 
which  the  simplest  is  the  cross,  and  the  more  complex  will  be 
composed  of  five,  six,  seven,  or  more  rays,  of  various  length. 
Then  farther,  successive  garlands  may  be  added  to  the  gar- 
lands, or  crossing  rays,  producing  chequers,  if  we  have  un- 
limited command  of  sixpences.  But  by  no  artifice  of  arrange- 
ment shall  we  be  able  to  produce  any  perfectly  interesting  or 
beautiful  form,  as  long  as  our  coins  remain  of  the  same  size. 

13.  But  now  take  some  fourpenny  and  threepenny  pieces 
also  ; and,  beginning  with  the  cross,  of  five  orbs  (Fig.  10), 
try  first  a sixpence  in  the  middle,  with  four  fourpenny  pieces 


OF  ELEMENTARY  FORM. 


45 


round  it ; and  then  a fourpenny  piece  in  the  middle,  with  four 
sixpences  round  it.  Either  group  will  be  more  pleasing  to 
you  than  the  original  one  : and  by  varying  the  intervals,  and 
removing  the  surrounding  coins  to  greater  or  less  distances, 
you  may  pleasantly  vary  even  this  single  group  to  a curious 
extent ; while  if  you  increase  the  number  of  coins,  and  farther 
vary  their  sizes,  adding  shillings  and  half-crowns  to  your 
original  resources,  you  will  find  the  producible  variety  of 
pleasant  figures  quite  infinite. 

14.  But,  supposing  your  natural  taste  and  feeling  moder- 
ately good,  you  will  always  feel  some  of  the  forms  you  arrive 
at  to  be  pleasanter  than  others  ; for  no  explicable  reason,  but 
that  there  is  relation  between  their  sizes  and  distances  which 
satisfies  you  as  being  under  some  harmonious  law.  Up  to  a 
certain  point,  I could  perhaps  show  you  logical  cause  for  these 
preferences  ; but  the  moment  the  groups  become  really  in- 
teresting, their  relations  will  be  found  far  too  complex  for 
definition,  and  our  choice  of  one  or  another  can  no  more  be 
directed  by  rule,  or  explained  by  reason,  than  the  degrees  of 
enjoyment  can  be  dictated,  or  the  reasons  for  admiration 
demonstrated,  as  we  look  from  Cassiopeia  to  Orion,  or  from 
the  Pleiades  to  Arcturus  with  his  sons. 

15.  Three  principles  only  you  will  find  certain  : 

A,  That  perfect  dependence  of  every  thing  on  every 

thing  else,  is  necessary  for  pleasantness. 

B,  That  such  dependence  can  only  become  perfect  by 

means  of  differences  in  magnitude  (or  other  quali- 
ties, of  course,  when  others  are  introduced). 

C,  That  some  kind  of  balance,  or  ‘ equity,’  is  necessary 

for  our  satisfaction  in  arrangements  which  are 
clearly  subjected  to  human  interference. 

You  will  be  perhaps  surprised,  when  you  think  of  it,  to  find 
that  this  last  condition — human  interference, — is  very  greatly 
involved  in  the  principles  of  contemplative  pleasure  ; and  that 
your  eyes  are  both  metaphysical,  and  moral,  in  their  approval 
and  blame. 

Thus,  you  have  probably  been  fastidious,  and  found  it  ne- 


THE  LAWS  OF  FES  OLE. 


46 

cessary  to  be  so,  before  you  could  please  yourself  with  enough 
precision  in  balance  of  coin  against  coin,  and  of  one  division 
of  each  coin-group  against  its  fellow.  But  you  would  not,  I 
think,  desire  to  arrange  any  of  the  constellations  I have  just 
named,  in  two  parallel  parts  ; or  to  make  the  rock-forms  on 
one  side  of  a mountain  valley,  merely  the  reversed  images  of 
those  upon  the  other  ? 

16.  Yet,  even  among  these,  you  are  sensible  of  a kind  of 
order,  and  rejoice  in  it ; nay,  you  find  a higher  pleasure  in 
the  mystery  of  it.  You  would  not  desire  to  see  Orion  and  the 
Pleiades  broken  up,  and  scattered  over  the  sky  in  a shower  of 
equal-sized  stars,  among  which  you  could  no  more  trace  group, 
or  line,  or  pre-eminence.  Still  less  would  you  desire  to  see 
the  stars,  though  of  different  magnitudes,  arrested  on  the  vault 
of  heaven  in  a chequer-pattern,  with  the  largest  stars  at  the 
angles,  or  appointed  to  rise  and  set  in  erected  ranks,  the  same 
at  zenith  and  horizon  ; never  bowed,  and  never  supine. 

17.  The  beautiful  passage  in  Humboldt’s  “Personal  Narra- 
tive ” in  wdiich  he  describes  the  effect  on  his  mind  of  the  first 
sight  of  the  Southern  Cross,  may  most  fitly  close,  confirm, 
and  illumine,  a chapter  too  wearisome  ; by  which,  however,  I 
trust  that  you  will  be  led  into  happier  trust  in  the  natural 
likings  and  dislikings  which  are  the  proper  groundwork  of 
taste  in  all  things,  finding  that,  in  things  directly  prepared  for 
the  service  of  men , a quite  palpable  order  and  symmetry  are 
felt  by  him  to  be  beautiful ; but  in  the  things  which  involve 
interests  wider  than  his  own,  the  mystery  of  a less  compre- 
hensible order  becomes  necessary  for  their  sublimity,  as,  for 
instance,  the  forms  of  mountains,  or  balances  of  stars,  express- 
ing their  birth  in  epochs  of  creation  during  which  man  had 
no  existence,  and  their  functions  in  preparing  for  a future 
state  of  the  world,  over  which  he  has  no  control. 

“We  saw  distinctly  for  the  first  time  the  Cross  of  the  South 
only,  in  the  night  of  the  4th  and  5th  of  July,  in  the  sixteenth 
degree  of  latitude  ; it  was  strongly  inclined,  and  appeared 
from  time  to  time  between  the  clouds,  the  centre  of  which, 
furrowed  by  uncondensed  lightnings,  reflected  a silver  light. 

“ Tf  a traveller  may  be  permitted  to  speak  of  his  personal 


OF  ELEMENTARY  FORM. 


47 


emotions*  I shall  add,  that  in  this  night  I saw  one  of  the  rev- 
eries of  my  earliest  youth  accomplished. 

% % % * * * 

“At  a period  when  I studied  the  heavens,  not  with  the  in- 
tention of  denoting  myself  to  astronomy,  but  only  to  acquire  a 
knowledge  of  the  stars,  f I was  agitated  by  a fear  unknown  to 
those  who  love  a sedentary  life.  It  seemed  painful  to  me  to 
renounce  the  hope  of  beholding  those  beautiful  constellations 
which  border  the  southern  pole.  Impatient  to  rove  in  the 
equinoctial  regions,  I could  not  raise  my  eyes  toward  the 
starry  vault  without  thinking  of  the  Cross  of* the  South,  and 
without  recalling  the  sublime  passage  of  Dante,  which  the 
most  celebrated  commentators  have  applied  to  this  constella- 
tion : 

‘ Io  mi  volsi  a man  destra,  e posi  inent 
All’  altro  polo  ; e vidi  quattro  stelle 
Non  viste  mai  fuor  ch'  alia  prima  gente 
Goder  pare  a lo  ciel  di  lor  fiammelle ; 

O settentrional  vedovo  sito, 

Poi  die  privato  se’  di  mirar  quelle  ! ’ 

“ The  two  great  stars  which  mark  the  summit  and  the  foot 
of  the  Cross  having  nearly  the  same  right  ascension,  it  follows 
hence  that  the  constellation  is  almost  perpendicular  at  the 
moment  when  it  passes  the  meridian.  This  circumstance  is 
known  to  every  nation  that  lives  beyond  the  tropics,  or  in  the 
southern  hemisphere.  It  has  been  observed  at  what  hour  of 
the  night,  in  different  seasons,  the  Cross  of  the  South  is  erect, 
or  inclined.  It  is  a timepiece  that  advances  very  regularly 
near  four  minutes  a day  ; and  no  other  group  of  stars  exhibits, 
to  the  naked  eye,  an  observation  of  time  so  easily  made.  How 
often  have  we  heard  our  guide  exclaim,  in  the  savannahs  of 
the  Venezuela,  or  in  the  desert  extending  from  Lima  to  Trux- 
iilo,  ‘ Midnight  is  past,  the  Cross  begins  to  bend ! ’ How 

* I italicise,  because  the  reserve  of  the  “ Personal  Narrative,”  in  this 
respect,  is  almost  majestic  ; and  entirely  exemplary  as  compared  with 
the  explosive  egotism  of  the  modern  tourist 

f Again  note  the  difference  between  modestly  useful,  and  vainly  arm 
bitious,  study. 


48 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE . 


often  those  words  reminded  us  of  that  affecting  scene  where 
Paul  and  Virginia,  seated  near  the  source  of  the  river  of 
Latainers,  conversed  together  for  the  last  time,  and  where  the 
old  man,  at  the  sight  of  the  Southern  Cross,  warns  them  that 
it  is  time  to  separate  ! ” 


CHAPTEE  VI. 

OF  ELEMENTARY  ORGANIC  STRUCTURE. 

1.  Among  the  •various  arrangements  made  of  the  coins  in 
our  last  experiment,  it  appeared  that  those  were  on  the  whole 
pleasantest  which  fell  into  some  crosslet  or  stellar  disposition, 
referred  to  a centre.  The  reader  might  perhaps  suppose  that, 
in  making  him  feel  this,  I was  preparing  the  way  for  assertion 
of  the  form  of  the  cross,  as  a beautiful  one,  for  religious  reasons. 
But  this  is  not  so.  I have  given  the  St.  George’s  cross  for 
first  practice,  that  our  art-work  might  be  thus  early  associated 
with  the  other  studies  of  our  schools  ; but  not  as  in  any  wise 
a dominant  or  especially  beautiful  form.  On  the  contrary,  if 
we  reduce  it  into  perfectly  simple  lines,  the  pure  cross  (a 
stellar  group  of  four  lines  at  right  angles)  wTill  be  found  to 
look  meagre  when  compared  with  the  stellar  groups  of  five, 
six,  or  seven  rays  ; and,  in  fact,  its  chief  use,  when  employed 
as  a decoration,  is  not  in  its  possession  of  any  symbolic  or  ab- 
stract charm,  but  as  the  simplest  expression  of  accurate,  and 
easy,  mathematical  division  of  space.  It  is  thus  of  great  value 
in  the  decoration  of  severe  architecture,  where  it  is  definitely 
associated  with  square  masonry  : but  nothing  could  be  more 
painful  than  its  substitution,  in  the  form  of  tracery  bars,  for 
the  stellar  tracery  of  any  fine  rose  window  ; though,  in  such  a 
position,  its  symbolic  office  would  be  perfect.  The  most  im. 
aginative  and  religious  symbolist  will,  I think,  be  surprised 
to  find,  if  he  thus  tries  it  fairly,  how  little  symbolism  can 
please,  if  physical  beauty  be  refused. 

2.  Nor  do  I doubt  that  the  author  of  the  book  on  heraldry 
above  referred  to,*  is  right  in  tracing  some  of  the  earliest 

* “Pursuivant  of  Arms,”  p.  48. 


Primal  Groups  of  Foils  with  Arc  Centres. 
Schools  of  St.  George.  Elementary  Drawing,  Plate  IV. 


OF  ELEMENTARY  ORGANIC  STRUCTURE, 


49 


forms  of  the  heraldic  cross  itself  “ to  the  metal  clamps  or 
braces  required  to  strengthen  and  protect  the  long,  kite-shaped 
shield  of  the  eleventh  and  twelfth  centuries.”  The  quartering 
of  the  field,  which  afterwards  became  the  foundation  of  the 
arrangement  of  bearings,  was  thus  naturally  suggested  by  the 
laws  of  first  construction.  But  the  “ Somerset  Herald  ” pushes 
his  modern  mechanics  too  far,  when  he  confuses  the  Cross 
Fleury  with  an  “ ornamental  clamp  ” ? (p.  49).  It  is  directly 
traceable  to  the  Byzantine  Fleur-de-lys,  and  that  to  Homer’s 
Iris. 

3.  So  also  with  respect  to  the  primary  forms  of  crystals,  the 
pleasure  of  the  eye  in  perceiving  that  the  several  lines  of  a 
group  may  be  traced  to  some  common  centre  is  partly  refer- 
able to  our  mere  joy  in  orderly  construction  : but,  in  our  gene- 
ral judgment  of  design,  it  is  founded  on  our  sense  of  the 
nature  of  radiant  light  and  heat  as  the  strength  of  all  organic 
life,  together  with  our  interest  in  noticing  either  growth  from 
a common  root  in  plants,  or  dependence  on  a nervous  or  other- 
wise vital  centre  in  animal  organism,  indicating  not  merely 
order  of  construction,  but  process  or  sequence  of  animation. 

4.  The  smallest  number  of  lines  wrhich  can  completely  express 
this  law  of  radiation*  is  five  ; or  if  a completely  opposite  sym- 
metry is  required,  six  ; and  the  families  of  all  the  beautiful 
flowers  prepared  for  the  direct  service  and  delight  of  man  are 
constructed  on  these  two  primary  schemes, — the  rose  repre- 
senting the  cinqfold  radiation,  and  the  lily  the  sixfold,  (pro- 
duced by  the  two  triangles  of  the  sepals  and  petals,  crossed, 
in  the  figure  called  by  the  Arabs  ‘ Solomon’s  Seal  ’) ; while 
the  fourfold,  or  cruciform,  are  on  the  whole  restricted  to  more 
servile  utility.  One  plant  only,  that  I know  of,  in  the  Rose 
family, — the  tormentilla, — subdues  itself  to  the  cruciform  type 
with  a grace  in  its  simplicity  which  makes  it,  in  mountain 
pastures,  the  fitting  companion  of  the  heathbell  and  thyme. 

* The  groups  of  three,  though  often  very  lovely,  do  not  clearly  express 
radiation,  hut  simply  cohesion ; because  by  merely  crowding  three  globes 
close  to  each  other,  you  at  once  get  a perfect  triune  form ; but  to  put 
them  in  a circle  of  five  or  more,  at  equal  distances  from  a centre,  re- 
quires an  ordering  and  proportionate  force. 

I 


50 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


5.  I shall  have  occasion  enough,  during  the  flower  study 
carried  on  in  “Proserpina,”  to  analyze  the  laws  of  stellar  group- 
ing in  flowers.  In  this  book  I shall  go  on  at  once  to  the  more 
complex  forms  produced  by  radiation  under  some  continually 
altering  force,  either  of  growth  from  a root,  or  of  motion  from 
some  given  point  under  given  law. 

We  will  therefore  return  to  our  feather  from  the  hen’s  wing, 
and  try  to  find  out,  by  close  examination,  why  -we  think  it,  and 
other  feathers,  pretty. 

6.  You  must  observe  first  that  the  feathers  of  all  birds  fall 
into  three  great  classes  : 

(1)  The  Feathers  for  Clothing. 

(2)  The  Feathers  for  Action. 

(3)  The  Feathers  for  Ornament. 

(1)  Feathers  for  clothing  are  again  necessarily  divided  into 
(a)  those  which  clothe  for  warmth, (down,)  which  are  the  bird’s 
blankets  and  flannel ; and  (b)  those  which  clothe  it  for  defence 
against  weather  or  violence  ; these  last  bearing  a beautiful 
resemblance  partly  to  the  tiles  of  a house,  partly  to  a knight’s 
armor.  They  are  imbricated  against  rain  and  wind,  like  tiles ; 
but  they  play  and  move  over  each  other  like  mail,  actually  be- 
coming effective  armor  to  many  of  the  warrior  birds ; as  in 
the  partial  protection  of  others  from  impact  of  driven  boughs, 
or  hail,  or  even  shot. 

(2)  Feathers  for  action.  These  are  essentially,  again,  either 
(a)  feathers  of  force,  in  the  wing,  or  (b)  of  guidance,  in  the 
tail,  and  are  the  noblest  in  structure  which  the  bird  possesses. 

(3)  Feathers  for  ornament.  These  are,  again,  to  be  divided 
into  (a),  those  which  modify  the  bird’s  form,  (being  then 
mostly  imposed  as  a crest  on  the  head,  or  expanded  as  a fan 
at  the  tail,  or  floating  as  a train  of  ethereal  softness,)  and  (b) 
those  which  modify  its  color ; these  last  being,  for  the  most 
part,  only  finer  conditions  of  the  armor  feathers  on  the  neck, 
breast,  and  back,  wfiiile  the  force-feathers  usually  are  reserved 
and  quiet  in  color,  though  more  or  less  mottled,  clouded,  or 
barred. 

7.  Before  proceeding  to  any  closer  observation  of  these 


OF  ELEMENTARY  ORGANIC  STRUCTURE. 


51 


three  classes  of  feathers,  the  student  must  observe  generally 
how  they  must  all  be  modified  according  to  the  bird’s  size. 
Chiefly,  of  course,  the  feathers  of  action,  since  these  are  strictly 
under  physical  laws  determining  the  scale  of  organic  strength. 
It  is  just  as  impossible  for  a large  bird  to  move  its  wings  with 
a rapid  stroke,  as  for  the  sail  of  a windmill,  or  of  a ship,  to 
vibrate  like  a lady’s  fan.  Therefore  none  but  small  birds  can 
give  a vibratory  (or  insect-like)  motion  to  their  wings.  On  the 
other  hand,  none  but  large  birds  can  sail  without  stroke, because 
small  wings  cannot  rest  on  a space  of  air  large  enough  to  sus- 
tain the  body. 

8.  Therefore,  broadly,  first  of  all,  birds  range — with  relation 
to  their  flight — into  three  great  classes  : (a)  the  sailing  birds, 
who,  having  given  themselves  once  a forward  impulse,  can  rest, 
merely  with  their  wings  open,  on  the  winds  and  clouds  ; (b) 
the  properly  so-called  flying  birds,  who  must  strike  with  their 
wings,  no  less  to  sustain  themselves  than  to  advance  ; and, 
lastly,  (c)  the  fluttering  birds,  who  can  keep  their  wings  quiver- 
ing like  those  of  a fly,  and  therefore  pause  at  will,  in  one  spot 
in  the  air,  over  a flower,  or  over  their  nest.  And  of  these  three 
classes,  the  first  are  necessarily  large  birds  (frigate-bird,  alba- 
tross, condor  and  the  like)  ; the  second,  of  average  bird-size, 
falling  chiefly  between  the  limiting  proportions  of  the  swallow 
and  seagull ; for  a smaller  bird  than  the  swift  has  not  power 
enough  over  the  air,  and  a larger  one  than  the  seagull  has  not 
power  enough  over  its  wings,  to  be  a perfect  flyer. 

Finally,  the  birds  of  vibratory  wing  are  all  necessarily  mi- 
nute, represented  chiefly  by  the  humming-birds  ; but  suffici- 
ently even  by  our  own  smaller  and  sprightlier  pets  : the  robin’s 
quiver  of  his  wing  in  leaping,  for  instance,  is  far  too  swift  to 
be  distinctly  seen. 

9.  These  are  the  three  main  divisions  of  the  birds  for  whom 
the  function  of  the  wing  is  mainly  flight. 

But  to  us,  human  creatures,  there  is  a class  of  birds  more 
pathetically  interesting — those  in  whom  the  function  of  the 
wing  is  essentially,  not  flight,  but  the  protection  of  their 
young. 

Of  these,  the  two  most  familiar  to  us  are  the  domestic  fowl 


52 


THE  LA  WS  OF  FESOLE. 

and  the  partridge ; and  there  is  nothing  in  arrangement  of 
plumage  approaching  the  exquisiteness  of  that  in  the  vaulted 
roofs  of  their  expanded  covering  wings  ; nor  does  any  thing  I 
know  in  decoration  rival  the  consummate  art  of  the  minute 
cirrus-clouding  of  the  partridge’s  breast. 

10.  But  before  we  can  understand  either  the  structure  of 
the  striking  plumes,  or  the  tincture  of  the  decorative  ones,  we 
must  learn  the  manner  in  which  all  plumes  whatsoever  are 
primarily  made. 

Any  feather — (as  you  know,  but  had  better  nevertheless  take 
the  first  you  can  find  in  your  hand  to  look  at,  as  you  read  on) 
— is  composed  of  a central  quill,  like  the  central  rib  of  a leaf, 
with  fine  rays  branching  from  it  on  each  side,  united,  if  the 
feather  be  a strong  one,  into  a more  or  less  silky  tissue  or 
4 web,’  as  it  has  hitherto  been  called  by  naturalists.*  Not  un- 

* So  far  as  one  can  make  out  wliat  they  call  any  thing ! The  follow- 
ing lucid  passage  is  all  that  in  the  seven  hundred  closely  printed  pages 
of  Mr.  Swainson’s  popular  ornithology,  the  innocent  reader  will  find 
vouchsafed  to  him  in  description  of  feathers  (§  71,  p.  77,  vol.  1)  : — 
“ The  regular  external  feathers  of  the  body,  like  those  of  the  wings  and 
tail,  are  very  differently  constructed  from  such  as  are  called  the  down  ; 
they  are  externally  composed  of  three  parts  or  substances:  1.  The 
down;  2.  The  laminae,  or  webs  (!)  ; and,  3.  The  shaft,  or  quill,  on  the 
sides  of  which  the  two  former  are  arranged.  The  downy  laminae,  or 
webs  of  these  feathers,  are  very  different  from  the  substance  we  have 
just  described,  since  they  not  only  have  a distinct  shaft  of  their  own, 
but  the  laminae  which  spring  from  both  sides  of  it  are  perceptibly  and 
regularly  arranged,  although,  from  being  devoid  of  all  elasticity,  (!)  like 
true  down,  they  do  not  unite  and  repose  parallel  to  each  other.  The 
soft  downy  laminae  are  always  situated  close  to  the  insertion  of  the 
quill  into  the  skin ; and  although,  for  obvious  reasons,  they  are  more 
developed  on  those  feathers  which  cover  the  body,  they  likewise  exist 
on  such  as  are  employed  in  flight,  as  shown  in  the  quill  of  a goose  ; 
and  as  they  are  always  concealed  from  sight  when  the  plumage  is  un- 
injured, and  are  not  exposed  to  the  action  of  the  air,  so  they  are  al- 
ways colorless.  The  third  part  of  a feather  consists  in  the  true  external 
laminae,  which  are  arranged  in  two  series,  one  on  each  side  the  shaft  ; 
and  these  sides  are  called  the  external  and  the  internal  (!  J)  webs.  To 
outward  appearance,  the  form  of  the  laminae  which  compose  these 
webs  appears  to  be  much  the  same  as  that  of  down,  which  has  been 
just  described,  with  this  difference  only,  that  the  laminae  are  stronger 


ON  ELEMENTARY  ORGANIC  STRUCTURE. 


53 


reasonably,  in  some  respects  ; for  truly  it  is  a woven  thing, 
with  a wrap  and  woof,  beautiful  as  Penelope’s  or  Arachne’s 
tapestry  ; but  with  this  of  marvel  beyond  beauty  in  it,  that  it 
is  a web  which  reweaves  itself  when  you  tear  it ! Closes 
itself  as  perfectly  as  a sea-wave  torn  by  the  winds,  being 
indeed  nothing  else  than  a wave  of  silken  sea,  which  the 
winds  trouble  enough  ; and  fret  along  the  edge  of  it,  like 
fretful  Benacus  at  its  shore  ; but  which,  tear  it  as  they  will, 
closes  into  its  unruffled  strength  again  in  an  instant. 

11.  There  is  a problem  for  you,  and  your  engines, — good 
my  Manchester  friends ! What  with  Thirlmere  to  fill  your 
boilers,  and  cotton  grown  by  free  niggers,  surely  the  forces  of 
the  universe  must  be  favorable  to  you, — and,  indeed,  wholly  at 
your  disposal.  Yet  of  late  I have  heard  that  your  various 
tissues  tear  too  easily ; — how  if  you  could  produce  them  such 
as  that  they  could  mend  themselves  again  wdtliout  help  from  a 
sewing-machine  ! (for  I find  my  glove-fingers,  sewn  up  the 
seam  by  that  great  economist  of  labor,  split  down  all  at  once 
like  walnut-shells).  But  even  that  Arabian  web  which  could 
be  packed  in  a walnut-shell  wrould  have  no  chance  of  rivalling 
with  yours  if  you  could  match  the  delicate  spirit  that  weaves 
— a sparrow’s  wing.  (I  suppose  you  have  no  other  birds  to 
look  at  now — within  fifty  miles.) 

However,  from  the  bodies  of  birds,  plucked  for  eating — or 
the  skins  of  them,  stuffed  for  wearing,  I do  not  doubt  but  the 
reader,  though  inhabitant  of  modern  English  towns,  may  still 
possess  himself,  or  herself,  of  a feather  large  enough  to  be  easily 
studied  ; * nay,  I believe  British  Law  still  indites  itself  with 

and  elastic,  and  seem  to  stick  together,  and  form  a parallel  series, 
which  the  downy  laminae  do  not.  Now,  this  singular  adhesiveness  is 
seen  by  the  microscope  to  be  occasioned  by  the  filaments  on  each  side 
of  these  laminae  being  hooked  into  those  of  the  next  laminae,  so  that 
one  supports  the  other  in  the  same  position;  while  their  elasticity  (!) 
makes  them  return  to  their  proper  place  in  the  series,  if  by  any  accident 
they  are  discomposed.  This  will  be  sufficient  to  give  the  reader  a cor- 
rect idea  of  the  general  construction  of  a feather,  without  going  into 
further  details  on  the  microscopic  appearance  of  the  parts.  ” 

* My  ingenious  friend,  Mr.  W.  E.  Dawes,  of  72  Denmark  Hill,  will 
attend  scrupulously  to  a feather,  to  any  orders  sent  him  from  Fesole. 


54 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


the  legitimate  goose-feather.  If  that  be  attainable,  with  grate- 
ful reverence  to  law,  in  general,  and  to  real  Scripture,  which 
is  only  possible  with  quill  or  reed  ; and  to  real  music,  of  Doric 
eagerness,  touched  of  old  for  the  oaks  and  rills,  while  the  still 
morn  went  out  with  sandals  gray — we  will  therewith  begin 
our  inquiry  into  the  weaving  of  plumes. 

12.  And  now,  for  convenience  of  description,  observe,  that 
as  all  feathers  lie  backwards  from  the  bird’s  head  towards  its 
tail,  when  we  hold  one  in  our  hand  by  the  point  of  the  quill  so 
as  to  look  at  its  upper  surface,  we  are  virtually  looking  from 
the  bird’s  head  towards  the  tail  of  it : therefore,  unless  with 
warning  of  the  contrary,  I shall  always  describe  the  feathers 
which  belong  to  the  bird’s  right  side,  which,  when  we  look 
down  on  its  back  and  wing,  with  the  head  towards  us,  curve 
for  the  most  part  with  the  convex  edge  to  our  own  left ; and 
when  we  look  dowm  on  its  throat  and  breast,  with  the  head 
towards  11s,  curve  for  the  most  part  with  the  convex  edge  to 
our  right. 

13.  Choosing,  therefore,  a goose-feather  from  the  bird’s 
right  wing,  and  holding  it  with  the  upper  surface  upwards, 
you  see  it  curves  to  your  own  right,  with  convex  edge  to  the 
left ; and  that  it  is  composed  mainly  of  the  rapidly  tapering 
quill,  with  its  two  so-called  ‘webs,’  one  on  each  side,  meeting 
in  a more  or  less  blunt  point  at  the  top,  like  that  of  a kitchen 
carving-knife. 

14.  But  I do  not  like  the  word  ‘web’  for  these  tissues  of 
the  feather,  for  two  reasons  : the  first,  that  it  would  get  con- 
fused with  the  word  we  must  use  for  the  membrane  of  the 
foot ; and  the  second,  that  feathers  of  force  continually  re- 
semble swords  or  scimitars,  striking  both  with  flat  and  edge  ; 
and  one  cannot  rightly  talk  of  striking  with  a web ! And  I 
have  been  a long  time  (this  number  of  Fesole  having,  indeed, 
been  materially  hindered  by  this  hesitation)  in  deciding  upon 
any  name  likely  to  be  acceptable  to  my  readers  for  these  all- 
important  parts  of  the  plume  structure.  The  one  I have  at 
last  fixed  upon,  ‘Fret,’  * will  not  on  the  instant  approve  itself 

* ‘ Vane  ’ is  used  in  tlie  English  translation  of  Cuvier  ; but  would  he 
too  apt  to  suggest  rotation  in  the  quill,  as  in  a weathercock. 


OF  ELEMENTARY  ORGANIC  STRUCTURE. 


55 


to  them  ; but  they  will  be  content  with  it,  I believe,  in  use.  I 
take  it  from  the  constant  fretting  or  rippling  of  the  surface  of 
the  tissue,  even  when  it  is  not  torn  along  its  edge,  * and  one 
can  fancy  a sword  ‘fretted’  at  its  edge,  easily  enough. 

15.  The  twTo  frets  are  composed,  you  see,  each  of — (I  was 
going  to  write,  innumerable  ; but  they  are  quite  numerable, 
though  many,) — smaller  feathers ; for  they  are  nothing  less, 
each  of  them,  than  a perfect  little  feather  in  its  own  way.  You 
will  find  it  convenient  to  call  these  the  ‘rays.’  In  a goose’s 
feather  there  are  from  thirty  to  forty  in  an  inch  of  the  fret ; 
three  or  four  hundred,  that  is  to  say,  on  each  side  of  the 
quill.  You  see — and  much  more,  may  feel — how  firmly  these 
plumelets  fasten  themselves  together  to  form  the  continuous 
strength  of  silken  tissue  of  the  fret. 

16.  Pull  one  away  from  the  rest,  and  you  find  it  composed 
of  a white  piece  of  the  substance  of  the  quill,  extended  into  a 
long,  slightly  hollowed  strip,  something  like  the  awn  of  a grain 
of  oats — each  edge  of  this  narrow  white  strip  being  fringed 
with  an  exquisitely  minute  series  of  minor  points,  or  teeth, 
like  the  teeth  of  a comb,  becoming  softer  and  longer  towards 
the  end  of  the  ray,  where  also  the  flat,  chaff-like  strip  of  quill 
becomes  little  more  than  a fine  rod. 

Again,  for  names  clear  and  short  enough  to  be  pleasantly 
useful,  I was  here  much  at  a loss,  and  cannot  more  satisfacto- 
rily extricate  myself  than  by  calling  the  awnlike  shaft  simply 
the  ‘ Shaft  ; ’ and  the  fine  points  of  its  serrated  edges,  (and 
whatever,  in  other  feathers,  these  become,)  ‘Barbs.’ 

1 7.  If,  with  a sharp  pair  of  scissors,  you  cut  the  two  frets 
away  from  the  quill,  down  the  whole  length  of  it,  you  will 
find  the  frets  still  hold  together,  inlaid,  woven  together  by 
their  barbs  into  a white  soft  riband, — feeling  just  like  satin 
to  the  finger,  and  looking  like  it  on  the  under  surface,  which 
is  exquisitely  lustrous  and  smooth.  And  it  needs  a lens  of 
some  power  to  show  clearly  the  texture  of  the  fine  barbs  that 
weave  the  web,  as  it  used  to  be  called,  of  the  whole. 

Nevertheless,  in  the  goose  feather,  the  rays  terminate  some- 
what irregularly  and  raggedly  ; and  it  will  be  better  now  to 
* See  “Lore’s  Sjjeime,*'  Lecture  I.,  page  38. 


56 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


take  for  further  examination  the  plume  of  a more  strongly 
flying  bird.  I take  that  of  the  common  seagull,*  where,  in 
exquisite  gray  and  dark-brown,  the  first  elements  of  variega- 
tion are  also  shown  at  the  extremity  of  the  plume.  ^ 

18.  And  here  the  edge  of  the  fret  is  rippled  indeed,  but  not 
torn  ; the  quill  tapers  with  exquisite  subtlety ; and  another 
important  part  of  plumage  occurs  at  the  root  of  it.  There 
the  shafts  of  the  rays  lose  their  stiffness  and  breadth ; they 
become  mere  threads,  on  which  the  barbs  become  long  and 
fine  like  hairs  ; and  the  whole  plumelet  becomes  a wavy,  wild- 
wandering thing,  each  at  last  entangled  with  its  fluttering 
neighbors,  and  forming  what  we  call  the  4 down  * of  the 
feather,  where  the  bird  needs  to  be  kept  warm. 

19.  When  the  shafts  change  into  these  wandering  threads, 
they  will  be  called  filaments ; and  the  barbs,  when  they  be- 
come fine  detached  hairs,  will  be  called  cilia.  I am  very  sorry 
to  have  all  this  nomenclature  to  inflict  at  once  ; but  it  is  abso- 
lutely needful,  all  of  it ; nor  difficult  to  learn,  if  you  will  only 
keep  a feather  in  your  hand  as  you  learn  it.  A feather  always 
consists  of  the  quill  and  its  rays ; a ray,  of  the  shaft  and  its 
barbs.  Flexible  shafts  are  filaments  ; and  flexible  barbs,  cilia. 

20.  In  none  of  the  works  which  I at  present  possess  on  or- 
nithology, is  any  account  given  of  the  general  form  or  nature 
of  any  of  these  parts  of  a plume  ; although  of  all  subjects  for 
scientific  investigation,  supremely  serviceable  to  youth,  this 
is,  one  should  have  thought,  the  nearest  and  most  tempting, 
to  any  person  of  frank  heart.  To  begin  with  it,  wre  must  think 
of  all  feathers  first  as  exactly  intermediate  between  the  fur 
of  animals  and  scales  of  fish.  They  are  fur,  made  strong, 
and  arranged  in  scales  or  plates,  partly  defensive  armor,  partly 
active  instruments  of  motion  or  action,  f And  there  are  defi- 

* Larus  Canus,  (Linnaeus,)  ‘White  Seamew.’  St.  George’s  English 
name  for  it. 

f Compare  “ Love’s  Meinie,”  Lecture  I.,  pp.  28,  29  ; hut  I find  myself 
now  compelled  to  give  more  definite  analysis  of  structure  by  the  entirely 
inconceivable,  (till  one  discovers  it,)  absence  of  any  such  analysis  in 
books  on  birds.  Their  writers  all  go  straight  at  the  bones,  like  hungry 
dogs  ; and  spit  out  the  feathers  as  if  they  were  choked  by  them. 


OF  ELEMENTARY  ORGANIC  STRUCTURE. 


57 


nitely  three  textures  of  this  strengthened  fur,  variously  pleas- 
urable to  the  eye  : the  first,  a dead  texture  like  that  of  simple 
silk  in  its  cocoon,  or  wool  ; reeeptant  of  pattern  colors  in 
definite  stain,  as  in  the  thrush  or  partridge  ; secondly,  a text- 
ure like  that  of  lustrous  shot  silk,  soft,  but  reflecting  different 
colors  and  different  lights,  as  in  the  dove,  pheasant,  and  pea- 
cock ; thirdly,  a quite  brilliant  texture,  flaming  like  metal — 
nay,  sometimes  more  brightly  than  any  polished  armor  ; and 
this  also  reflective  of  different  colors  in  different  lights,  as  in 
the  humming-bird.  Between  these  three  typical  kinds  of 
lustre,  there  is  every  gradation  ; the  tender  lustre  of  the  dove’s 
plumage  being  intermediate  between  the  bloomy  softness  of 
the  partridge,  and  the  more  than  rainbow  iridescence  of  the 
peacock  ; while  the  semi- metallic,  unctuous,  or  pitchy  lustre  of 
the  raven,  is  midway  between  the  silken  and  metallic  groups. 

21.  These  different  modes  of  lustre  and  color  depend  en- 
tirely on  the  structure  of  the  barbs  and  cilia.  I do  not  often 
invite  my  readers  to  use  a microscope  ; but  for  once,  and  for 
a little  while,  we  will  take  the  tormenting  aid  of  it. 

In  all  feathers  used  for  flight,  the  barbs  are  many  and  mi- 
nute, for  the  purpose  of  locking  the  shafts  well  together.  But 
in  covering  and  decorative  plumes,  they  themselves  become 
principal,  and  the  shafts  subordinate.  And,  since  of  flying 
plumes  we  have  first  taken  the  seagull’s  wing  feather,  of  cov- 
ering plumes  we  will  first  take  one  from  the  seagull’s  breast. 

22.  I take  one,  therefore,  from  quite  the  middle  of  a sea- 
mew’s  breast,  where  the  frets  are  equal  in  breadth  on  each 
side.  You  see,  first,  that  the  whole  plume  is  bent  almost  into 
the  shape  of  a cup  ; and  that  the  soft  white  lustre  plays  vari- 
ously on  its  rounded  surface,  as  you  turn  it  more  or  less  to 
the  light.  This  is  the  first  condition  of  all  beautiful  forms. 
Until  you  can  express  this  rounded  surface,  you  need  not 
think  you  can  draw  them  at  all. 

23.  But  for  the  present,  I only  want  you  to  notice  the  struct- 
ure and  order  of  its  rays.  Any  single  shaft  with  its  lateral 
barbs,  towards  the  top  of  the  feather,  you  will  find  approxi- 
mately of  the  form  Fig.  11,  the  central  shaft  being  so  fine  that 
towards  the  extremity  it  is  quite  lost  sight  of  ; and  the  end 


58 


THE  LAWS  OF  FES  OLE. 


of  the  rays  being  not  formed  by  the  extremity  of  the  shaft, 
with  barbs  tapering  to  it,  but  by  the  forked  separation,  like 
the  notch  of  an  arrow,  of  the  two  ultimate  barbs.  Which, 


please,  observe  to  be  indeed  the  normal  form  of  all  feathers, 
as  opposed  to  that  of  leaves ; so  that  the  end  of  a feather, 
however  finely  disguised,  is  normally  as  at  a,  Fig.  12  ; but  of 
a leaf,  as  at  b ; the  arrow-like  form  of  the  feather  being  de- 
veloped into  the  most  lovely  duplicated  symmetries  of  outline 


guished  from  the  color  designs  in  minerals,  and  in  merely 
wood-forming,  as  opposed  to  floral,  or  seed-forming,  leaves. 

24.  You  will  observe  also,  in  the  detached  ray,  that  the 
barbs  lengthen  downwards,  and  most  distinctly  from  the 
middle  downwards ; and  now  taking  up  the  wing-feather 
again,  you  will  see  that  its  frets  being  constructed  by  the  im- 
brication, or  laying  over  each  other  like  the  tiles  of  a house 
of  the  edges  of  the  successive  rays, — ^ * 

on  the  upper  or  outer  surface  of  the  VK  sf  J 

plume,  the  edges  are  overlaid  towards 
the  plume-pomg  like  breaking  waves  /fl 

over  each  other  towards  shore  ; and  of 
course,  on  the  under  surface,  reversed, 
and  overlaid  towards  the  root  of  the  xL,!/’” 

quill.  You  may  understand  this  in  a FlG* 13" 

moment  by  cutting  out  roughly  three  little  bits  of  cardboard, 
of  this  shape  (Fig.  18),  and  drawing  the  directions  of  the 


Feg.  11. 


Fig.  12. 


and  pattern,  by  which, 
throughout,  the  color  de- 
signs of  feathers,  and  of 
floral  petals,  (which  are  the 
sign  of  the  dual  or  married 
life  in  the  flower,  raising 
it  towards  the  rank  of  ani- 
mal nature,)  are  distin- 


OF  ELEMENTARY  ORGANIC  STRUCTURE. 


59 


barbs  on  them  : I cut  their  ends  square  because  they  are  too 
short  to  represent  the  lengths  of  real  rays,  but  are  quite  long 
enough  to  illustrate  their  imbrication.  Lay  first  the  three  of 
them  in  this  position,  (Fig.  14,  a,)  with  their  points  towards  you, 
one  above  the  other  ; then  put  the  edge  of  the  lowest  over  the 
edge  of  that  above  it,  and  the  edge  of  that  over  the  third,  so 
as  just  to  show  the  central  shaft,  and  you  will  get  three  edges, 
with  their  barbs  all  vertical,  or  nearly  so  : that  is  the  struct- 
ure of  the  plume’s  upper  surface.  Then  put  the  edges  of  the 
farther  off  ones  over  the  nearer,  and  you  get  three  edges  with 
their  barbs  all  transverse,  (Fig.  14,  b,)  which  is  the  structure 


of  the  plume’s  lower  surface.  There  are,  of  course,  endless 
subtleties  and  changes  of  adjustment,  but  that  is  the  first 
general  law  to  be  understood. 

25.  It  follows,  as  a necessary  consequence  of  this  arrange- 
ment,  that  we  may  generally  speak  of  the  barbs  which  form 
the  upper  surface  of  the  feather  as  the  upper,  or  longitudinal, 
barbs,  meaning  those  which  lie  parallel  to  the  quill,  pointing 
to  the  end  of  the  feather  ; and  of  those  which  form  the  under 
surface  of  the  feather  as  the  lower,  or  transverse,  barbs,— lying, 
that  is  to  say,  nearly  transversely  across  the  feather,  at  right 
angles  to  the  quill.  And  farther,  as  you  see  that  the  quill 
shows  itself  clearly  projecting  from  the  under  surface  of  the 
plume,  so  the  shafts  show  themselves  clearly  projecting,  in  a 
corduroy  fashion,  on  the  under  surface  of  the  fret,  the  trans- 
verse barbs  being  seen  only  in  the  furrows  between  them. 


60 


THE  LAWS  OF  FES  OLE. 


26.  Now,  I should  think,  in  looking  carefully  at  this  close 
structure  of  quill  and  shaft,  you  will  be  more  and  more  struck 
by  their  resemblance  to  the  beams  and  tiles  of  a roof.  The 
feather  is,  in  fact,  a finely  raftered  and  tiled  roof  to  throw  ofl 
wind  and  rain  ; and  in  a large  family  of  birds  the  wing  has 
indeed  chiefly  a roof’s  office,  and  is  not  only  raftered  and 
tiled,  but  vaulted , for  the  roof  of  the  nursery.  Of  which  here- 
after ; in  the  meantime,  get  this  clearly  into  your  head,  that 
on  the  upper  surface  of  the  plume  the  tiles  are  overlaid  from 
the  bird’s  head  backward — so  as  to  have  their  edges  away 
from  the  wind,  that  it  may  slide  over  them  as  the  bird  flies  ; — 
and  the  furrows  formed  by  the  barbs  lie  parallel  with  the 
quill,  so  as  to  give  the  least  possible  friction.  The  under  side 
of  the  plume,  you  may  then  always  no  less  easily  remember, 
has  the  transverse  barbs  ; and  tile-edges  towards  the  bird’s 
head.  The  beauty  and  color  of  the  plume,  therefore,  depend 
mainly  on  the  formation  of  the  longitudinal  barbs,  as  long  as 
the  fret  is  close  and  firm.  But  it  is  kept  close  and  firm 
throughout  only  in  the  wing  feathers  ; expanding  in  the  dec- 
orative ones,  under  entirely  different  conditions. 

27.  Looking  more  closely  at  your  seamew’s  breast-feather, 
you  will  see  that  the  rays  lock  themselves  close  only  in  the 
middle  of  it ; and  that  this  close-locked  space  is  limited  by  a 
quite  definite  line,  outside  of  which  the  rays  contract  their 
barbs  into  a thick  and  close  thread,  each  such  thread  de- 
tached from  its  neighbors,  and  forming  a snowy  fringe  of  pure 
white,  while  the  close-locked  part  is  toned,  by  the  shades 
which  show  you  its  structure,  into  a silver  gray. 

Filially,  at  the  root  of  the  feather,  not  only  do  its  own  rays 
change  into  down,  but  underneath,  you  find  a supplementary 
plume  attached,  composed  of  nothing  else  but  down. 

28.  I find  no  account,  in  any  of  my  books  on  birds,  of  the 
range  of  these  supplementary  under-plumes, — the  bird’s 
body-clothing.  I find  the  seagull  has  them  nearly  all  over 
its  body,  neck,  breast,  and  back  alike ; the  small  feathers  on 
the  head  are  nothing  else  than  down.  But  besides  these,  or 
in  the  place  of  these,  some  birds  have  down  covering  the  skin 
itself ; with  which,  however,  the  painter  has  nothing  to  do, 


OF  ELEMENTARY  ORGANIC  STRUCTURE. 


61 


nor  even  with  the  supplementary  plumes  : and  already  indeed 
I have  allowed  the  pupil,  in  using  the  microscope  at  all,  to  go 
beyond  the  proper  limits  of  artistic  investigation.  Yet,  while 
we  have  the  lens  in  our  hand,  put  on  for  once  its  full  power 
to  look  at  the  separate  cilia  of  the  down.  They  are  all  jointed 
like  canes  ; and  have,  doubtless,  mechanism  at  the  joints 
which  no  eye  nor  lens  can  trace.  The  same  structure,  modi- 
fied, increases  the  lustre  of  the  true  barbs  in  colored  plumes. 

One  of  the  simplest  of  these  I will  now  take,  from  the  back 
of  the  peacock,  for  a first  study  of  plume-radiation. 

29.  Its  general  outline  is  that  of  the  Norman  shield  payb, 
Fig.  15  ; but  within  this  outline,  the 
frets  are  close-woven  only  within  the 
battledore-shaped  space  p a v b;  and 
between  a a,  and  b b,  they  expand  their 
shafts  into  filaments,  and  their  barbs 
into  cilia,  and  become  ‘down.’ 

We  are  only  able  to  determine  the 
arrangement  of  the  shafts  within  this 
closely-woven  space  p a v b,  which  you 
will  find  to  be  typically  thus.  The 
shafts  remaining  parallel  most  of  the 
way  up,  towards  the  top  of  the  plume, 
gradually  throw  themselves  forward  so 
as  to  get  round  without  gap.  But  as,  while  they  are  thus 
getting  round,  they  are  not  fastened  on  a central  pivot  like  the 
rays  of  a fan,  but  have  still  to  take,  each  its  ascending  place 
on  the  sides  of  the  quill,  we  get  a method  of  radiation  which 
you  will  find  convenient  henceforward  to  call  ‘ plume-radia- 
tion,’ (Fig.  16,  b,)  which  is  precisely  intermediate  between  two 
other  great  modes  of  structure — shell  radiation,  a,  and  frond° 
radiation,  c. 

30.  You  may  perhaps  have  thought  yourself  very  hardly 
treated  in  being  obliged  to  begin  your  natural  history  drawing 
with  so  delicate  a thing  as  a feather.  But  you  should  rather  be 
very  grateful  to  me,  for  not  having  given  you,  instead,  a bit 
of  moss,  or  a cockle-shell  ! The  last,  which  you  might  per- 
haps fancy  the  easiest  of  the  three,  is  in  reality  quite  hope- 


v. 


62 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


lessly  difficult,  and  in  its  ultimate  condition,  inimitable  hy 
art.  Bewick  can  engrave  feathers  to  the  point  of  deceptive 
similitude  ; and  Hunt  can  paint  a bird’s-nest  built  of  feathers, 
lichen,  and  moss.  But  neither  the  one  nor  the  other  ever  at- 
tempted to  render  the  diverging  lines  which  have  their  origin 
in  the  hinge  of  the  commonest  bivalve  shell. 

31.  These  exactly  reverse  the  condition  of  frond-radiation  ; 
in  that,  while  the  frond-branch  is  thick  at  the  origin,  and 
diminishes  to  the  extremity,  the  shell  flutings,  infinitely  mi- 
nute at  the  origin,  expand  into  vigorous  undulation  at  the 
edge.  But  the  essential  point  you  have  now  to  observe  is, 
that  the  shell-radiation  is  from  a central  point , and  has  no 


supporting  or  continuous  stem  ; that  the  plume-radiation  is  a 
combination  of  stem  and  centre  ; and  that  the  frond-radiation 
has  a stem  throughout,  all  the  way  up.  It  is  to  be  called 
frond,  not  tree,  radiation,  because  trees  in  great  part  of  their 
structure  are  like  plumage,  whereas  the  fern-frond  is  entirely 
and  accurately  distinct  in  its  structure. 

32.  And  now,  at  last,  I draw  the  entire  feather  as  well  as  I 
can  in  lampblack,  for  an  exercise  to  you  in  that  material ; 
putting  a copy  of  the  first  stage  of  the  work  below  it,  Plate 
V.  This  lower  figure  may  be  with  advantage  copied  by  begin- 
ners ; with  the  pencil  and  rather  dry  lampblack,  over  slight 
lead  outline  ; the  upper  one  is  for  advanced  practice,  though 
such  minute  drawing,  where  the  pattern  is  wrought  out  with 
separate  lines,  is  of  course  only  introductory  to  true  painter’s 
work.  But  it  is  the  best  possible  introduction,  being  exactly 
intermediate  between  such  execution  as  Durer’s,  of  the  wing 


Decorative  Plumage. — I.  Peacock. 

Schools  of  St.  George.  Elementary  Drawing,  Plate  V. 


Black  Sheep’s  Trotters.  Pen  Outline  with  Single  Wash. 


OF  ELEMENTARY  ORGANIC  STRUCTURE. 


63 


in  tlie  greater  Fortune,  and  Turner’s  or  Holbein’s  with  the 
broad  pencil, — of  which  in  due  time. 

33.  Respecting  the  two  exercises  in  Plate  V.,  observe,  the 
lower  figure  is  not  an  outline  of  the  feather,  to  be  filled  up  ; 
it  is  the  first  stage  of  the  drawing  completed  above  it.  In  or- 
der to  draw  the  curves  of  the  shafts  harmoniously,  you  must 
first  put  in  a smaller  number  of  guiding  lines,  and  then  fill  in 
between.  But  in  this  primary  state,  the  radiant  lines  cannot 
but  remind  you,  if  you  are  at  all  familiar  with  architecture,  of 
a Greek  4 honey-suckle  ’ ornament,  the  fact  being  that  the  said 
ornament  has  nothing  at  all  to  do  with  honey-suckles  ; but  is 
a general  expression  of  the  radiate  organic  power  of  natural 
forms,  evermore  delightful  to  human  eyes  ; and  the  beauty  of 
it  depends  on  just  as  subtle  care  in  bringing  the  curves  into 
harmonious  flow,  as  you  will  have  to  use  in  drawing  this 
plume. 

34  Nevertheless,  that  students  possessing  some  already 
practised  power  may  not  be  left  without  field  for  its  exercise, 
I have  given  in  Plate  VI.  an  example  of  the  use  of  ink  and 
lampblack  with  the  common  pen  and  broad  wash.  The  out- 
line is  to  be  made  with  common  ink  in  any  ordinary  pen — 
steel  or  quill  does  not  matter,  if  not  too  fine — and,  after  it  is 
thoroughly  dry,  the  shade  put  on  with  a single  wash,  adding 
the  necessary  darks,  or  taking  out  light  with  the  dry  brush, 
as  the  tint  dries,  but  allowing  no  retouch  after  it  is  once  dry. 
The  reason  of  this  law7  is,  first,  to  concentrate  the  attention  on 
the  fullest  possible  expression  of  forms  by  the  tint  first  laid, 
which  is  always  the  pleasantest  that  can  be  laid,  and,  secondly, 
that  the  shades  may  be  all  necessarily  gradated  by  running 
into  the  w7et  tint,  and  no  edge  left  to  be  modified  afterwards. 
The  outline,  that  it  may  be  indelible,  is  made  with  common 
ink ; its  slight  softening  by  the  subsequent  wash  being  prop- 
erly calculated  on  : but  it  must  not  be  washed  twice  over. 

35.  The  exercise  in  the  lower  figure  of  Plate  I.  is  an  exam- 
ple of  Durer’s  manner  ; but  I do  not  care  to  compel  the  pupil 
to  go  through  much  of  this,  because  it  is  always  unsatisfactory 
at  its  finest,  Durer  himself  has  to  indicate  the  sweep  of  his 
plume  with  a current  external  line  ; and  even  Bewick  could 


04 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


not  have  done  plume  patterns  in  line,  unless  he  had  had  the 
advantage  of  being  able  to  cut  out  his  white  ; but  with  the 
pencil,  and  due  patience  in  the  use  of  it,  every  thing  linear 
in  plumes  may  be  rightly  indicated,  and  the  pattern  followed 
all  the  time. 

The  minute  moss- like  fringe  at  the  edge  of  the  feather  in 
Plate  Y.  introduces  us,  however,  to  another  condition  of  dec- 
orative plumage,  which,  though  not  bearing  on  our  immediate 
subject  of  radiation,  we  may  as  well  notice  at  once. 

If  you  examine  a fine  tail-feather  of  the  peacock,  above  the 
eye  of  it,  you  will  find  a transparent  space  formed  by  the  ces- 
sation of  the  barbs  along  a certain  portion  of  the  shaft.  On 
the  most  scintillanfc  of  the  rays,  which  have  green  and  golden 
barbs,  and  in  the  lovely  blue  rays  of  the  breast-plumes,  these 
cessations  of  the  barbs  become  alternate  cuts  or  jags ; while 
at  the  end  of  the  long  brown  wing-feathers,  they  comply  with 
the  colored  pattern  : so  that,  at  the  end  of  the  clouded  plume, 
its  pattern,  instead  of  being  constructed  of  brown  and  while 
barbs,  is  constructed  of  brown — and  no  barbs, — but  vacant 
spaces.  The  decorative  use  of  this  transparency  consists  in 
letting  the  color  of  one  plume  through  that  of  the  other,  so 
that  not  only  every  possible  artifice  is  employed  to  obtain  the 
most  lovely  play  of  color  on  the  plume  itself  ; but,  with  mys- 
tery through  mystery,  the  one  glows  and  flushes  through  the 
other,  like  cloud  seen  through  cloud.  But  now,  before  we 
can  learn  how  either  glow,  or  flush,  or  bloom  are  to  be  painted, 
we  must  learn  our  alphabet  of  color  itself. 


CHAPTER  VXL 

OF  THE  TWELVE  ZODIACAL  COLORS, 

1.  In  my  introductory  Oxford  lectures  you  wall  find  it 
stated  (§  130)  that  “ail  objects  appear  to  the  eye  merely  as 
masses  of  color  ; ” and  (§§  134,  175)  that  shadows  are  as  full  in 
color  as  lights  are,  every  possible  shade  being  a light  to  the 
shades  below  it,  and  every  possible  light,  a shade  to  the  lights 


OF  THE  TWELVE  ZODIACAL  CO  LORE. 


05 


above  it,  till  you  come  to  absolute  darkness  on  one  side,  and 
to  the  sun  on  the  other.  Therefore,  you  are  to  consider  all 
the  various  pieces  either  of  shaded  or  lighted  color,  out  of 
which  any  scene  whatsoever  is  composed,  simply  as  the 
patches  of  a Harlequin’s  jacket — of  which  some  are  black, 
some  red,  some  blue,  some  golden  ; but  of  which  you  are  to 
imitate  every  one,  by  the  same  methods. 

2.  It  is  of  great  importance  that  you  should  understand 
how  much  this  statement  implies.  In  almost  all  the  received 
codes  of  art-instruction,  you  will  be  told  that  shadows  should 
be  transparent,  and  lights  solid.  You  will  find  also,  when 
you  begin  drawing  yourselves,  that  your  shadows,  whether 
laid  with  lead,  chalk,  or  pencil,  will  for  the  most  part  really 
look  like  dirt  or  blotches  on  the  paper,  till  you  cross-hatch  or 
stipple  them,  so  as  to  give  them  a look  of  network  ; upon 
which  they  instantly  become  more  or  less  like  shade  ; or,  as  it 
is  called,  ‘ transparent.’  And  you  will  find  a most  powerful 
and  attractive  school  of  art  founded  on  the  general  principle 
of  laying  a literally  transparent  brown  all  over  the  picture, 
for  the  shade  ; and  striking  the  lights  upon  it  with  opaque 
white. 

3.  Now  the  statement  I have  just  made  to  you  (in  § 1)  im- 
plies the  falseness  of  all  such  theories  and  methods.*  And  I 
mean  to  assert  that  falsity  in  the  most  positive  manner.  Shad- 
ows are  not  more  transparent  than  lights,  nor  lights  than  shad- 
ows ; both  are  transparent,  when  they  express  space  ; both  are 
opaque,  when  they  express  substance  ; and  both  are  to  be  imi- 
tated in  precisely  the  same  manner,  and  with  the  same  quality, 
of  pigment.  The  only  technical  law  which  is  indeed  constant, 
and  which  requires  to  be  observed  with  strictness,  is  precisely 
that  the  method  shall  be  uniform.  You  may  take  a white 
ground,  and  lay  darks  on  it,  leaving  the  white  for  lights  ; or 
you  may  take  a dark  ground,  and  lay  lights  on  it,  leaving  the 
dark  for  darks  : in  either  case  you  must  go  on  as  you  begin, 
and  not  introduce  the  other  method  where  it  suits  you.  A 

* Essentially,  the  use  of  transparent  brown  by  Rubens,  (followed  by 
Sir  Joshua  with  asphaltum,)  ruined  the  Netherland  schools  of  color,  and 
has  rendered  a school  of  color  in  England  hitherto  impossible, 

5 


THE  LA  WS  OF  Fit  SOLE. 


OG 

glass  painter  must  make  his  whole  picture  transparent ; and  a 
fresco  painter,  his  whole  picture  opaque. 

4.  Get,  then,  this  plain  principle  well  infixed  in  your  minds. 
Here  is  a crocus — there  is  the  sun — here  a piece  of  coal — there, 
the  hollow  of  the  coal-scuttle  it  came  out  of.  They  are  every 
one  hut  patches  of  color, — some  yellow,  some  black  ; and  must 
be  painted  in  the  same  manner,  with  whatever  yellow  or  black 
paint  is  handy. 

5.  Suppose  it,  however,  admitted  that  lights  and  shades 
are  to  be  produced  in  the  same  manner  ; we  have  farther  to 
ask,  what  that  manner  may  best  be  ? 

You  will  continually  hear  artists  disputing  about  grounds, 
glazings,  vehicles,  varnishes,  transparencies,  opacities,  oleagi- 
nousnesses. All  that  talk  is  as  idle  as  the  east  wind.  Get  a 
flat  surface  that  won’t  crack, — some  colored  substance  that 
will  stick  upon  it,  and  remain  always  of  the  color  it  was  when 
you  put  it  on, — and  a pig’s  bristle  or  two,  wedged  in  a stick  ; 
and  if  you  can’t  paint,  you  are  no  painter  ; and  had  better  not 
talk  about  the  art. 

The  one  thing  you  have  to  learn — the  one  power  truly  called 
that  of  * painting  ’ — is  to  lay  on  any  colored  substance,  what- 
ever its  consistence  may  be,  (from  mortar  to  ether,)  at  once , 
of  the  exact  tint  you  want,  in  the  exact  form  you  want,  and  in 
the  exact  quantity  you  want.  That  is  painting. 

6.  Now,  you  are  well  aware  that  to  play  on  the  violin  well, 
requires  some  practice.  Painting  is  playing  on  a color-violin, 
seventy-times-seven  stringed,  and  inventing  your  tune  as  you 
play  it ! That  is  the  easy,  simple,  straightforward  business 
you  have  to  learn.  Here  is  your  catgut  and  your  mahogany, 
— better  or  worse  quality  of  both  of  course  there  may  be, — 
Cremona  tone,  and  so  on,  to  be  discussed  with  due  care,  in 
due  time  ; — you  cannot  paint  miniature  on  the  sail  of  a fish- 
ing-boat, nor  do  the  fine  work  with  hog’s  bristles  that  you  can 
with  camel’s  hair  : — all  these  catgut  and  bristle  questions  shall 
have  their  place  ; but,  the  primary  question  of  all  is — can  you 
play  ? 

7.  Perfectly,  you  never  can,  but  by  birth-gift.  The  entirely 
first-rate  musicians  and  painters  are  born,  like  Mercury 


OF  THE  TWELVE  ZODIACAL  COLORS. 


67 


their  words  are  music,  and  their  touch  is  gold  ; sound  and 
color  wait  on  them  from  their  youth  ; and  no  practice  will  ever 
enable  other  human  creatures  to  do  any  thing  like  them.  The 
most  favorable  conditions,  the  most  docile  and  apt  temper, 
and  the  unwearied  practice  of  life,  will  never  enable  any  painter 
of  merely  average  human  capacity  to  lay  a single  touch  like 
Gainsborough,  Velasquez,  Tintoret,  or  Luini.  But  to  under- 
stand that  the  matter  must  still  depend  on  practice  as  well  as 
on  genius. — that  painting  is  not  one  whit  less,  but  more,  diffi- 
cult than  playing  on  an  instrument, — and  that  your  care  as  a 
student,  on  the  whole,  is  not  to  be  given  to  the  quality  of 
your  piano,  but  of  your  touch, — this  is  the  great  fact  which  I 
have  to  teach  you  respecting  color  ; this  is  the  root  of  ail  ex- 
cellent  doing  and  perceiving. 

And  you  will  be  utterly  amazed,  when  once  you  begin  to 
feel  what  color  means,  to  find  how  many  qualities  which  ap- 
pear to  result  from,  peculiar  method  and  material  do  indeed 
depend  only  on  loveliness  of  execution  ; and  how  divine  the 
law  of  nature  is,  which  has  so  connected  the  immortality  of 
beauty  with  patience  of  industry,  that  by  precision  and  right- 
ness of  laborious  art  you  may  at  last  literally  command  the 
rainbow  to  stay,  and  forbid  the  sun  to  set. 

8.  To-day,  then,  you  are  to  begin  to  learn  your  notes — to 
hammer  out,  steadily,  your  first  five-finger  exercises  ; and  as 
in  music  you  have  first  to  play  in  true  time,  with  stubborn 
firmness,  so  in  color  the  first  thing  you  have  to  learn  is  to  lay 
it  fiat,  and  well  within  limits.  You  shall  have  it  first  within 
linear  limits  of  extreme  simplicity,  and  you  must  be  content 
to  fill  spaces  so  enclosed,  again  and  again  and  again,  till  you 
are  perfectly  sure  of  your  skill  up  to  that  elementary  point. 

9.  So  far,  then,  of  the  manner  in  which  you  are  to  lay  your 
color ; — next  comes  the  more  debatable  question  yet,  what 
kind  of  color  you  are  thus  to  lay, — sober,  or  bright.  For 
you  are  likely  often  to  have  heard  it  said  that  people  of  taste 
like  subdued  or  dull  colors,  and  that  only  vulgar  persons  like 
bright  ones. 

But  I believe  you  will  find  the  standard  of  color  I am  going 
to  give  you,  an  extremely  safe  one — the  morning  sky.  Love 


68 


THE  LAWS  OF  FE80LE. 


that  rightly  with  all  your  heart,  and  soul,  and  eyes  ; and  yon 
are  established  in  foundation-laws  of  color.  The  white, 
blue,  purple,  gold,  scarlet,  and  ruby  of  morning  clouds,  are 
meant  to  be  entirely  delightful  to  the  human  creatures  whom 
the  ‘ clouds  and  light  * sustain.  Be  sure  you  are  always  ready 
to  see  them , the  moment  they  are  painted  by  God  for  you. 

But  you  must  not  rest  in  these.  It  is  possible  to  love  them 
intensely,  and  yet  to  have  no  understanding  of  the  modesty  or 
tenderness  of  color. 

Therefore,  next  to  the  crystalline  firmament  over  you,  the 
crystalline  earth  beneatli  your  feet  is  to  be  your  standard. 

Flint,  reduced  to  a natural  glass  containing  about  ten  per 
cent  of  water,  forms  the  opal ; which  gives  every  lower  hue 
of  the  prism  in  as  true  perfection  as  the  clouds  ; but  not  the 
scarlet  or  gold,  both  which  are  crude  and  vulgar  in  opal. 
Its  perfect  hues  are  the  green,  blue,  and  purple.  Emerald 
and  lapis-lazuli  give  central  green  and  blue  in  fulness  ; and  the 
natural  hues  of  all  true  gems,  and  of  the  marbles,  jaspers,  and 
chalcedonies,  are  types  of  intermediate  tint : the  oxides  of  iron, 
especially,  of  reds.  All  these  earth-colors  are  curiously  pre- 
pared for  right  standards  : there  is  no  misleading  in  them. 

10.  Not  so  when  we  come  to  the  colors  of  flowers  and 
animals.  Some  of  these  are  entirely  pure  and  heavenly  ; the 
dove  can  contend  with  the  opal,  the  rose  with  the  clouds,  and 
the  gentian  with  the  sky  ; but  many  animals  and  flowers  are 
stained  with  vulgar,  vicious,  or  discordant  colors.  But  all 
those  intended  for  the  service  and  companionship  of  man  are 
typically  fair  in  color  ; and  therefore  especially  the  fruits 
and  flowers  of  temperate  climates  ; — the  purple  of  the  grape 
and  plum  ; the  red  of  the  currant  and  strawberry,  and  of  the 
expressed  juices  of  these, — the  vane  that  “ giveth  his  color  in 
the  cup,”  and  the  “ lucent  syrup  tinct  with  cinnamon.”  With 
these,  in  various  subordination,  are  associated  the  infinitudes 
of  quiet  and  harmonized  color  on  which  the  eye  is  intended 
to  repose  ; the  softer  duns  and  browns  of  birds  and  animals, 
made  quaint  by  figured  patterns ; and  the  tender  green  and 
gray  of  vegetation  and  rock. 

11.  No  science,  but  only  innocence,  gayety  of  heart,  and 


OF  THE  TWELVE  ZODIACAL  COLORS . 


69 


ordinary  health  and  common  sense,  are  needed,  to  enable  us 
to  enjoy  all  these  natural  colors  rightly.  But  the  more  grave 
hues,  which,  in  the  system  of  nature,  are  associated  with 
danger  or  death,  have  become,  during  the  later  practice  of  art, 
pleasing  in  a mysterious  way  to  the  most  accomplished  artists  : 
so  that  the  greatest  masters  of  the  sixteenth  century  may  be 
recognized  chiefly  by  their  power  of  producing  beauty  with 
subdued  colors.  I cannot  enter  here  into  the  most  subtle 
and  vital  question  of. the  difference  between  the  subdued 
colors  of  Velasquez  or  Tintoret,  and  the  daubed  gray  and 
black  of  the  modern  French  school  ;*  still  less  into  any 
analysis  of  the  grotesque  inconsistency  which  makes  the 
foreign  modern  schools,  generally,  repaint  all  sober  and 

* One  great  cause  of  tlie  delay  which  has  taken  place  in  the  publica- 
tion of  this  book  has  been  my  doubt  of  the  proper  time  and  degree  in 
which  study  in  subdued  color  should  be  undertaken.  For  though,  on 
the  one  hand,  the  entirely  barbarous  glare  of  modern  colored  illustration 
would  induce  me  to  order  practice  in  subdued  color  merely  for  antidote 
to  it ; on  the  other,  the  affectation, — or  morbid  reality, — of  delight  in 
subdued  color,  are  among  the  fatallest  errors  of  semi-artists.  The  attacks 
on  Turner  in  his  greatest  time  were  grounded  in  real  feeling,  on  the  part 
of  his  adversaries,  of  the  solemnity  in  the  subdued  tones  of  the  schools  of 
classic  landscape. 

To  a certain  extent,  therefore,  the  manner  of  study  in  color  required 
of  any  student  must  be  left  to  the  discretion  of  the  master,  who  alone 
can  determine  what  qualities  of  color  the  pupil  is  least  sensible  to  ; and 
set  before  him  examples  of  brightness,  if  he  has  become  affectedly  grave, 
— and  of  subdued  harmony,  if  he  errs  by  crudeness  and  discord.  But 
the  general  law  must  be  to  practise  first  in  pure  color,  and  then,  as  our 
sense  of  what  is  grave  and  noble  in  life  and  conduct  increases,  to  express 
what  feeling  we  have  of  such  things  in  the  hues  belonging  to  them,  re- 
membering, however,  always,  that  the  instinct  for  grave  color  is  not  at 
all  an  index  of  a grave  mind.  I have  had  curious  proof  of  this  in  my 
own  experience.  When  I was  an  entirely  frivolous  and  giddy  boy,  I 
was  fondest  of  what  seemed  to  me  ‘ sublime’  in  gloomy  art,  just  in  pro- 
portion as  I was  insensible  to  crudeness  and  glare  in  the  bright  colors 
which  I enjoyed  for  their  own  sake  : and  the  first  old  picture  I ever 
tried  to  copy  was  the  small  Rembrandt  in  the  Louvre,  of  the  Supper  at 
Emmaus.  But  now,  when  my  inner  mind  is  as  sad  as  it  is  well  possible 
for  any  man’s  to  be,  and  my  thoughts  ate  for  the  most  part  occupied  in 
very  earnest  manner,  and  with  very  grave  subjects,  my  ideal  of  color  is 


TO 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE 


tender  pictures  with  glaring  colors,  and  yet  reduce  the  pure 
colors  of  landscape  to  drab  and  brown.  In  order  to  ex- 
plain any  of  these  phenomena,  I should  have  first  to  dwrell  on 
the  moral  sense  which  has  induced  us,  in  ordinary  languages 
to  use  the  metaphor  of  c chastity  ’ for  the  virtue  of  beautifully 
subdued  color  ; and  then  to  explain  how  the  chastity  of  Brit- 
omart  or  Perdita  differs  from  the  vileness  of  souls  that  despise 
love.  But  no  subtle  inquiries  or  demonstrations  can  be  ad- 
mitted in  writing  primal  laws  ; nor  will  they  ever  be  needed, 
by  those  who  obey  them.  The  things  which  are  naturally 
pleasant  to  innocence  and  youth,  will  be  forever  pleasant  to 
us,  both  in  this  life  and  in  that  wdiich  is  to  come  ; and  the 
same  law  which  makes  the  babe  delight  in  its  coral,  and 
the  girl  in  the  carnelian  pebble  she  gathers  from  the  Tvet  and 
shining  beach,  will  still  rule  their  joy  within  the  walls  whose 
light  shall  be  “ like  a stone  most  precious,  even  like  a jasper 
stone,  clear  as  crystal.” 

12.  These  things,  then,  above  named,  without  any  debate, 
are  to  be  received  by  you  as  standards  of  color  : by  admira- 
tion of  which  you  may  irrefragably  test  the  rightness  of  your 
sense,  and  by  imitation  * of  which  you  can  form  and  order  all 
the  principles  of  your  practice.  The  morning  sky,  primarily, 
I repeat  ; and  that  from  the  dawn  onwards.  There  are  no 
grays  nor  violets  which  can  come  near  the  perfectness  of  a 
pure  dawn  ; no  gradations  of  other  shade  can  be  compared 

that  which  I now  assign  for  the  standard  of  St.  George's  schools,— the 
color  of  sunrise,  and  of  Angelico. 

Why  not,  then,  of  the  rainbow,  simply  ? 

Practically,  I must  use  those  of  the  rainbow  to  begin  with.  But,  for 
standards,  I give  the  sunrise  and  Angelico,  because  the  sun  and  he  both 
use  gold  for  yellow.  Which  is  indeed  an  infinite  gain  ; if  poor  Turner 
had  only  been  able  to  use  gold  for  yellow  too,  we  had  never  heard  any 
vulgar  jests  about  him.  But,  in  cloud-painting,  nobody  can  use  gold 
except  the  sun  himself, — while,  on  angel’s  wings,  it  can  but  barely  be 
managed,  if  you  have  old  Etruscan  blood  in  your  fingers, — not  here,  by 
English  ones,  cramped  in  their  clutch  of  Indian  or  Californian  gold. 

* ‘ Imitation  ’ — I use  the  word  advisedly.  The  last  and  best  lesson 
I ever  had  in  color  was  a vain  endeavor  to  estimate  the  time  which  An- 
gelico must  have  taken  to  paint  a small  amethyst  on  the  breast  of  his 
St.  Laurence. 


OF  THE  TWELVE  ZODIACAL  COLORS. 


71 


with  the  tenderness  of  its  transitions.  Dawn,  with  the  wan- 
ing moon,  (it  is  always  best  so,  because  the  keen  gleam  of  the 
thin  crescent  shows  the  full  depth  of  the  relative  gray.)  de- 
termines for  you  all  that  is  lovely  in  subdued  hue  and  sub- 
dued light.  Then  the  passages  into  sunrise  determine  for  you 
all  that  is  best  in  the  utmost  glory  of  color.  Next  to  these, 
having  constant  office  in  the  pleasures  of  the  day,  come  the 
colors  of  the  earth,  and  her  fruits  and  flowers  ; the  iron 
ochres  being  the  standards  of  homely  and  comfortable  red, 
always  ruling  the  pictures  of  the  greatest  masters  at  Venice, 
as  opposed  to  the  vulgar  vermilion  of  the  Dutch  ; hence  they 
have  taken  the  general  name  of  Venetian  red  : then,  gold  it- 
self, for  standard  of  lustrous  yellow,  tempered  so  wisely  with 
gray  in  the  shades  ; silver,  of  lustrous  white,  tempered  in  like 
manner ; marble  and  snow,  of  pure  white,  glowing  into  vari- 
ous amber  and  rose  under  sunlight : then  the  useful  blossoms 
and  fruits  ; — peach  and  almond  blossom,  with  the  wild  rose, 
of  the  paler  reds  ; the  Clarissas,  of  full  reds,  etc.  ; and  the 
fruits,  of  such  hues  modified  by  texture  or  bloom.  Once  learn 
to  paint  a peach,  an  apricot,  and  a greengage,  and  you  have 
nothing  more  to  know  in  the  modes  of  color  enhanced  by 
texture.  Corn  is  the  standard  of  brown, — moss  of  green  ; 
and  in  general,  whatever  is  good  for  human  life  is  also  made 
beautiful  to  human  sight,  not  by  “ association  of  ideas,”  but 
by  appointment  of  God  that  in  the  bread  we  rightly  break  for 
our  lips,  we  shall  best  see  the  power  and  grace  of  the  Light 
he  gave  for  our  eyes. 

IB.  The  perfect  order  of  the  colors  in  this  gentle  glory  is, 
of  course,  normal  in  the  rainbow, — namely,  counting  from 
outside  to  inside,  red,  yellow,  and  blue,  with  their  combina- 
tions,*— namely,  scarlet,  formed  by  yellow  with  red  ; green, 
formed  by  blue  with  yellow  ; and  purple,  formed  by  red  with 
blue. 

* Strictly  speaking,  the  rainbow  is  all  combination  ; the  primary 
colors  being  only  lines  of  transition,  and  the  bands  consisting  of  scarlet, 
green,  and  purple  ; the  scarlet  being  not  an  especially  pure  or  agreeable 
one  in  its  general  resultant  hue  on  cloud-gray.  The  green  and  violet 
are  very  lovely  when  seen  over  white  cloud. 


72 


THE  LA  W8  OF  FES  OLE. 


14.  But  neither  in  rainbow,  prism,  nor  opal,  are  any  of 
these  tints  seen  in  separation.  They  pass  into  each  other  by 
imperceptible  gradation,  nor  can  any  entirely  beautiful  color 
exist  without  this  quality.  Between  each  secondary,  there- 
fore, and  the  primaries  of  which  it  is  composed,  there  are 
an  infinite  series  of  tints  ; inclining  on  one  side  to  one 
primary,  on  the  other  to  the  other  ; thus  green  passes  into 
blue  through  a series  of  bluish  greens,  which  are  of  great  im- 
portance in  the  painting  of  sea  and  sky  ; — and  it  passes  into 
yellow  through  a series  of  golden  greens,  which  are  of  no  less 
importance  in  painting  earth  and  flowers.  Now  it  is  very 
tiresome  to  have  to  mix  names  as  well  as  colors,  and  always 
say  ‘bluish  green/  or  ‘reddish  purple/  instead  of  having 
proper  special  names  for  these  intermediate  tints.  Practically 
we  have  such  names  for  several  of  them  ; ‘ orange/  for  in- 
stance, is  the  intermediate  between  scarlet  and  yellow  ; ‘lilac  ’ 
one  of  the  paler  tints  between  purple  and  red  ; and  ‘ violet  * 
that  between  purple  and  blue.  But  we  must  now  have  our 
code  of  names  complete  ; and  that  we  may  manage  this  more 
easily,  we  will  put  the  colors  first  in  their  places. 

15.  Take  your  sixpence  again  ; and,  with  that  simple  math- 
ematical instrument,  draw  twelve  circles  of  its  size,  or  at  least 
as  closely  by  its  edge  as  you  can,*  on  a piece  of  Bristol  board, 
so  that  you  may  be  able  to  cut  them  out,  and  place  them  va- 
riously. Then  take  carmine,  cobalt,  gamboge,  orange  vermil- 
ion, and  emerald  green  ; and,  marking  the  circles  with  the 
twelve  first  letters  of  the  alphabet,  color  ‘ a 9 with  pure  gam- 
boge, ‘6’ with  mixed  gamboge  and  emerald  green,  ‘c’witli 
emerald  green,  ‘ d 9 with  emerald  green  and  cobalt,  ‘ e 9 with 
cobalt  pure,  lf9  with  two-thirds  cobalt  and  one-third  carmine, 
eg*  with  equally  mixed  cobalt  and  carmine,  ‘ h’  with  two- 
thirds  carmine  and  one-third  cobalt,  ‘ i 9 with  carmine  pure, 
‘j  9 with  carmine  and  vermilion,  ‘ h 9 with  vermilion,  ‘ l 9 with 
vermilion  and  gamboge. 

* It  is  really  in  practice  better  to  do  this  than  to  take  compasses, 
which  are  nearly  sure  to  slip  or  get  pinched  closer,  in  a beginner’s 
hands,  before  the  twelve  circles  are  all  done.  But  if  you  like  to  do  it 
accurately,  see  Fig.  17,  p.  77. 


OF  THE  TWELVE  ZODIACAL  COLORS.  To 

16.  But  liow  is  all  this  to  be  clone  smoothly  and  rightly,  and 
how  are  the  thirds  to  be  measured  ? * Well, — for  the  doing 
of  it,  I must  assume,  that  in  the  present  artistic  and  communi- 
cative phase  of  society,  the  pupil  can,  at  some  chance  oppor- 
tunity, see  the  ordinary  process  of  washing  with  water-color  ; 
or  that  the  child  in  more  happy  circumstances  may  be  allowed 
so  to  play  with  ‘ paints  ’ from  its  earliest  years,  as  to  be  under 
no  particular  difficulty  in  producing  a uniform  stain  on  a 
piece  of  pasteboard.  The  quantity  of  pigment  to  be  used 
cannot  be  yet  defined  ; — the  publication  of  these  opening 
numbers  of  Fesole  has  already  been  so  long  delayed  that  I 
want  now  to  place  them  in  the  student’s  hand,  with  what 
easily  explicable  details  I can  give,  as  soon  as  possible  ; and 
the  plates  requiring  care  in  coloring  by  hand,  which  will 
finally  be  given  as  examples,  are  deferred  until  I can  give  my 
readers  some  general  idea  of  the  system  to  be  adopted.  But, 
for  present  need,  I can  explain  all  that  is  wanted  without  the 
help  of  plates,  by  reference  to  flower-tints  ; not  that  the  stu- 
dent is  to  be  vexed  by  any  comparisons  of  his  work  with  these, 
either  in  respect  of  brilliancy  or  texture  : if  he  can  bring  his 
sixpenny  circles  to  an  approximate  resemblance  of  as  many 
old-fashioned  wafers,  it  is  all  that  is  required  of  him.  He 

* I have  vainly  endeavored  to  persuade  Messrs.  Winsor  and  Newton 
to  prepare  for  me  powder-colors,  of  which  I could  direct  half  or  a quar- 
ter grain  to  be  mixed  with  a measured  quantity  of  water ; hut  I have 
not  given  up  the  notion.  In  the  meantime,  the  firm  have  arranged 
at  my  request  a beginner’s  box  of  drawing  materials, — namely,  colors, 
brushes,  ruler,  and  compasses  fitted  with  pencil-point.  (As  this  note 
may  be  read  by  many  persons,  hurriedly,  who  have  not  had  time  to 
look  at  the  first  number,  I allow  once  more,  but  for  the  last  time  in  this 
book,  the  vulgar  use  of  the  words  ‘ pencil’  and  ‘ brush.’)  The  working 
pencil  and  penknife  should  be  always  in  the  pocket,  with  a small 
sketch-book,  which  a student  of  drawing  should  consider  just  as  Neces- 
sary a part  of  his  daily  equipment  as  his  watch  or  purse.  Then  the 
color-box,  thus  composed,  gives  him  all  he  wants  more.  For  the  ad- 
vanced student,  I add  the  palette,  with  all  needful  mathematical  instru- 
ments and  useful  colors.  I give  Mm  colors,  of  finest  quality, — being 
content,  for  beginners,  with  what  I find  one  of  the  best  practical  color- 
ists in  England,  my  very  dear  friend  Professor  Westwood,  has  found 
serviceable  all  his  life, — children's  colors. 


74 


THE  LAWS  OF  FE80LE. 


will  not  be  able  to  do  this  with  one  coat  of  color ; and  had 
better  allow  himself  three  or  four  than  permit  the  tints  to  be 
uneven. 

17.  The  first  tint,  pure  gamboge,  should  be  brought,  as 
near  as  may  be,  up  to  that  of  the  yellow  daffodil, — the  butter- 
cup is  a little  too  deep.  In  fine  illumination,  and  in  the  best 
decorative  fresco  painting,  this  color  is  almost  exclusively 
represented  by  gold,  and  the  student  is  to  give  it,  habitually, 
its  heraldic  name  of  ‘Or.’ 

The  second  tint,  golden-green,  which  is  continually  seen  in 
the  most  beautiful  shies  of  twilight,  and  in  sunlighted  trees 
and  grass,  is  yet  unrepresented  by  any  flower  in  its  fulness  ; 
but  an  extremely  pale  hue  of  it,  in  the  primrose,  forms  the 
most  exquisite  opposition,  in  spring,  to  the  blue  of  the  wood- 
hyacinth  ; and  we  will  therefore  keep  the  name,  ‘Primrose,’ 
for  the  hue  itself. 

The  third  tint,  pure  green,  is,  in  heraldry,  £ verd,’  on  the 
shields  of  commoners,  and  ‘ Emerald’  on  those  of  nobles.  We 
will  take  for  St.  George’s  schools  the  higher  nomenclature, 
which  is  also  the  most  intelligible  and  convenient ; and  as  we 
complete  our  color  zodiac,  wre  shall  thus  have  the  primary  and 
secondary  colors  named  from  gems,  and  the  tertiary  from 
flowers. 

18.  The  next  following  color,  howTever,  the  tertiary  between 
green  and  blue,  is  again  not  represented  distinctly  by  any 
flowTer  ; but  the  blue  of  the  Gentiana  Verna  is  so  associated 
with  the  pure  green  of  Alpine  pasture,  and  the  color  of  Alpine 
lakes,  which  is  precisely  the  hue  we  now  want  a name  for, 
that  I will  call  this  beautiful  tertiary  ‘ Lucia  ; ’ (that  being  the 
name  given  in  “Proserpina”  to  the  entire  tribe  of  the  gentians,) 
and  especially  true  to  our  general  conception  of  luminous 
powSr  or  transparency  in  this  color,  wrhich  the  Greeks  gave 
to  the  eyes  of  Athena. 

19.  The  fifth  color,  the  primary  blue,  heraldic  ‘ azure,’  or 
‘ sapphire,’  we  shall  always  call  * Sapphire  ; ’ though,  in  truth, 
the  sapphire  itself  never  reaches  any  thing  like  the  intensity 
of  this  color,  as  used  by  the  Venetian  painters,  who  took  for 
its  representative  pure  ultramarine.  But  it  is  only  seen  in 


OF  THE  TWELVE  ZODIACAL  COLORS. 


75 


perfect  beauty  in  some  gradations  of  the  blue  glass  of  the 
twelfth  century.  For  ordinary  purposes,  cobalt  represents  it 
with  sufficient  accuracy. 

20.  The  sixth  color,  the  tertiary  between  sapphire  and 
purple,  is  exactly  the  hue  of  the  Greek  sea,  and  of  the  small 
Greek  iris,  Homer’s  lov,  commonly  translated  ‘ violet.’  We 
will  call  it  ‘ Violet ; ’ our  own  flower  of  that  name  being  more 
or  less  of  the  same  hue,  though  paler.  I do  not  know  what 
the  ‘syrup  of  violets’  was,  with  which  Humboldt  stained  his 
test-paper,  (“Personal  Narrative,”  i.,  p.  165,)  but  I am  under 
the  impression  that  an  extract  of  violets  may  be  obtained 
wdiich  will  represent  this  color  beautifully  and  permanently. 
Smalt  is  one  of  its  approximate  hues. 

21.  The  seventh  color,  the  secondary  purple,  is  the  deepest 
of  all  the  pure  colors ; it  is  the  heraldic  ‘ purpure,’  and 
‘jacinth;’  by  us  ahvays  to  be  called  ‘Jacinth.’  It  is  best 
given  by  the  dark  pansy  ; see  the  notes  on  that  flower  in  the 
seventh  number  of  “Proserpina,”  which  will  I hope  soon  be 
extant. 

22.  The  eighth  color,  the  tertiary  between  purple  and  red, 
corresponds  accurately  to  the  general  hue  and  tone  of  bell- 
heather,  and  will  be  called  by  us  therefore  ‘Heath.’  In 
various  depths  and  modifications,  of  which  the  original  tint 
cannot  be  known  with  exactness,  it  forms  the  purple  ground 
of  the  most  stately  missals  between  the  seventh  and  twelfth 
century,  such  as  the  Psalter  of  Boulogne.  It  wTas  always, 
however,  in  these  books,  I doubt  not,  a true  heath-purple,  not 
a violet. 

23.  The  ninth  color,  the  primary  red,  heraldic  ‘ gules  ’ and 
‘ ruby,’  will  be  called  by  us  always  ‘ Ruby.’  It  is  not  repre- 
sented accurately  by  any  stable  pigment ; but  crimson  lake, 
or,  better,  carmine,  may  be  used  for  it  in  exercises  ; and  rose 
madder  in  real  painting. 

24.  The  tenth  color,  the  tertiary  between  red  and  scarlet, 
corresponds  to  the  most  beautiful  dyes  of  the  carnation,  and 
other  deeper-stained  varieties  of  the  great  tribe  of  the  pinks. 
The  mountain  pink,  indeed,  from  which  they  all  are  in  justice 
named,  is  of  an  exquisitely  rich,  though  pale,  ruby  : but  the 


76 


THE  LA  W8  OF  FESOLE. 


intense  glow  of  the  flower  leans  towards  fiery  scarlet  in  its 
crimson  ; and  I shall  therefore  call  this  tertiary,  ‘ Clarissa,’  the 
name  of  the  pink  tribe  in  “ Proserpina.” 

25.  The  eleventh  color,  the  secondary  scarlet,  heraldic 
‘tenny  ’ and  ‘jasper,’  is  accurately  represented  by  the  alumi- 
nous silicas,  colored  scarlet  by  iron,  and  will  be  by  us  always 
called  ‘Jasper.’ 

26.  The  twelfth  color,  the  tertiary  between  scarlet  and  gold, 
is  most  beautifully  represented  by  the  golden  crocus, — being 
the  color  of  the  peplus  of  Athena.  We  shall  call  it  ‘Crocus 
thus  naming  the  group  of  the  most  luminous  colors  from  the 
two  chief  families  of  spring  flowers,  with  gold  (for  the  sun) 
between  them. 

This,  being  the  brightest,  had  better  be  placed  uppermost 
in  our  circle,  and  then,  taking  the  rest  in  the  order  I have 
named  them,  we  shall  have  our  complete  zodiac  thus  arranged. 
(Fig.  17.*) 

27.  However  rudely  the  young  student  may  have  colored 
his  pieces  of  cardboard,  when  he  has  placed  them  in  contact 
with  each  other  in  this  circular  order,  he  will  at  once  see  that 
they  form  a luminous  gradation,  in  which  the  uppermost,  Or, 
is  the  lightest,  and  the  lowest,  Jacinth,  the  darkest  hue. 

Every  one  of  the  twelve  zodiacal  colors  has  thus  a pitch  of 
intensity  at  which  its  special  hue  becomes  clearly  manifest 
and  above  which,  or  below  which,  it  is  not  clearly  recognized, 
and  may,  even  in  ordinary  language,  be  often  spoken  of  as 
another  color.  Crimson,  for  instance,  and  pink,  are  only  the 
dark  and  light  powers  of  the  central  Clarissa,  and  ‘ rose  ’ the 
pale  power  of  the  central  Ruby.  A pale  jacinth  is  scarcely 
ever,  in  ordinary  terms,  called  purple,  but  ‘ lilac.’ 

28.  Nevertheless,  in  strictness,  each  color  is  to  be  held  as  ex- 

* If  you  choose  to  construct  this  figure  accurately,  draw  first  the  circle 
x y,  of  the  size  of  a sixpence,  and  from  its  diameter  x y,  take  the 
angles  m a x,  n a y,  each  = the  sixth  of  the  quadrant,  or  fifteen  de- 
grees. Draw  the  lines  a b,  a 1,  each  equal  to  x y : and  1 and  b are  the 
centres  of  the  next  circles.  Then  the  perpendiculars  from  m and  n will 
cut  the  perpendicular  from  a in  the  centre  of  the  large  circle.  And  if 
you  get  it  all  to  come  right,  I wish  you  joy  of  it. 


OF  THE  TWELVE  ZODIACAL  COLORS,  77 

tending  in  unbroken  gradation  from  white  to  black,  through  a 
series  of  tints,  in  some  cases  recognizable  throughout  for  the 
same  color  ; but  in  all  the  darker  tones  of  Jasper,  Crocus  and 
Or,  becoming  what  we  call  ‘ brown  ; ’ and  in  the  darker  tints 
of  Lucia  and  Primrose  passing  into  greens,  to  which  artists 
have  long  given  special  titles  of  ‘Sap,’  ‘Olive,’  ‘Prussian,’  and 
the  like. 


Fig.  17. 


29.  After  we  have  studied  the  modifications  of  shade  itself, 
in  neutral  gray,  we  will  take  up  the  gradated  scales  of  each 
color  ; dividing  them  always  into  a hundred  degrees,  between 
white  and  black ; of  which  the  typical  or  representative  hue 
will  be,  in  every  one  of  the  zodiacal  colors,  at  a different  height 


78 


THE  LA  WS  OF  FESOLE. 


in  the  scale — the  representative  power  of  Or  being  approxi* 
mately  20  ; of  Jasper,  30  ; of  Ruby,  50  ; and  of  Jacinth,  70. 
But,  for  the  present,  we  must  be  content  with  much  less  precise 
ideas  of  hue  ; and  begin  our  practice  writh  little  more  than 
the  hope  of  arriving  at  some  effective  skill  in  producing  the 
tints  we  want,  and  securing  some  general  conclusions  about 
their  effects  in  companionship  with,  or  opposition  to,  each 
other  ; the  principal  use  of  their  zodiacal  arrangement,  above 
given,  being  that  each  color  is  placed  over  against  its  proper 
opponent ; — Jacinth  being  the  hue  which  most  perfectly  relieves 
Or,  and  Primrose  the  most  lovely  opponent  to  Heath.  The 
stamens  and  petals  of  the  sweet-william  present  the  loveliest 
possible  type  of  the  opposition  of  a subtle  and  subdued  Lucia 
to  dark  Clarissa.  In  central  spring  on  the  higher  Alps,  the 
pansy,  (or,  where  it  is  wanting,  the  purple  ophryds,)  with  the 
bell  gentian,  and  pale  yellow  furred  anemone,  complete  the  en- 
tire chord  from  Or  to  Jacinth  in  embroideries  as  rich  as  those 
of  an  Eastern  piece  of  precious  needlework  on  green  silk.* 
The  chord  used  in  the  best  examples  of  glass  and  illumination 
is  Jasper,  Jacinth,  and  Sapphire,  on  ground  of  Or  : being  the 
scarlet,  purple,  and  blue  of  the  Jewish  Tabernacle,  wfith  its 
clasps  and  furniture  of  gold. 

30.  The  best  Rubrics  of  ecclesiastical  literature  are  founded 
on  the  opposition  of  Jasper  to  Sapphire,  wdiich  was  the  princi- 
pal one  in  the  minds  of  the  illuminators  of  the  thirteenth 
century.  I do  not  know  if  this  choice  wras  instinctive,  or 
scientific  ; many  far  more  beautiful  might  have  been  adopted  ; 
and  I continually,  and  extremely,  regret  the  stern  limitation 
of  the  lovely  penmanship  of  ail  minor  lettering,  for  at  least 
a hundred  years  through  the  whole  of  literary  Europe,  to 
these  two  alternating  colors.  But  the  fact  is  that  these  do 
quite  centrally  and  accurately  express  the  main  opposition  of 
what  artists  call,  and  most  people  feel  to  be  truly  called,  warm 
colors  as  opposed  to  cold  ; pure  blue  being  the  coldest,  and 
pure  scarlet  the  warmest,  of  abstract  hues. 

31.  Into  the  mystery  of  Heat,  however,  as  affecting  color- 
sensation,  I must  not  permit  inyself  yet  to  enter,  though  I 

* Conf.  Lane's  “Arabian  Kights,”  vol.  i.,  p.  480,  and  vol.  ii.,  p.  395. 


OF  T1IE  RELATION  OF  COLOR  TO  OUTLINE.  79 


believe  the  student  of  illumination  will  be  enabled  at  once, 
by  the  system  given  in  this  chapter,  to  bring  his  work  under 
more  consistent  and  helpful  law  than  he  has  hitherto  found 
written  for  his  use.  My  students  of  drawing  will  find  the 
subject  carried  on  as  far  as  they  need  follow,  in  tracing  the 
symbolic  meanings  of  the  colors,  from  the  28th  to  the  40th 
paragraph  of  the  seventh  chapter  of  “ Deucalion  ; ” (compare 
also  “Eagle’s Nest,”  p.  134  ;)  and,  without  requiring,  in  prac- 
tice, the  adoption  of  any  nomenclature  merely  fanciful,  it  may 
yet  be  found  useful,  as  an  aid  to  memory  for  young  people, 
to  associate  in  their  minds  the  order  of  the  zodiacal  colors 
with  that  of  the  zodiacal  signs.  Taking  Jacinth  for  Aries,  Or 
will  very  fitly  be  the  color  of  Libra,  and  blue  of  Aquarius  ; 
other  associations,  by  a little  graceful  and  careful  thought, 
may  be  easily  instituted  between  each  color  and  its  constella- 
tion ; and  the  motion  of  the  Source  of  Light  through  th9 
heavens,  registered  to  the  imagination  by  the  beautiful  chord 
of  his  own  divided  rays. 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

OF  THE  RELATION  OF  COLOR  TO  OUTLINE. 

1.  My  dear  reader, — If  you  have  been  obedient,  and  have 
hitherto  done  all  that  I have  told  you,  I trust  it  has  not  been 
without  much  subdued  remonstrance,  and  some  serious  vexa- 
tion. For  I should  be  sorry  if,  when  you  were  led  by  the 
course  of  your  study  to  observe  closely  such  things  as  are 
beautiful  in  color,  (feathers,  and  the  like,  not  to  say  rocks  and 
clouds,*)  you  had  not  longed  to  paint  them,  and  felt  considera- 
ble difficulty  in  complying  with  your  restriction  to  the  use  of 
black,  or  blue,  or  gray.  You  ought  to  love  color,  and  to  think 
nothing  quite  beautiful  or  perfect  without  it  ; and  if  you  really 
do  love  it,  for  its  own  sake,  and  are  not  merely  desirous  to 

* The  first  four  paragraphs  of  this  chapter,  this  connecting  paren- 
thesis excepted,  are  reprinted  from  the  “ Elements  of  Drawing.”  Read, 
however,  carefully,  the  modifying  notes. 


80 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


color  because  you  think  painting*  a finer  thing  than  drawing, 
there  is  some  chance  you  may  color  well.  Nevertheless,  you 
need  not  hope  ever  to  produce  anything  more  than  pleasant 
helps  to  memory,  or  useful  and  suggestive  sketches  in  color, 
unless  you  mean  to  be  wholly  an  artist.  You  may,  in  the 
time  which  other  vocations  leave  at  your  disposal,  produce 
finished,  beautiful,  and  masterly  drawings  in  light  and  shade. 
But  to  color  well,  requires  your  life.  It  cannot  be  done 
cheaper.  The  difficulty  of  doing  right  is  increased — not  two- 
fold nor  threefold,  but  a thousandfold,  and  more — by  the  ad- 
dition of  color  to  your  work.  For  the  chances  are  more  than 
a thousand  to  one  against  your  being  right  both  in  form  and 
color  with  a given  touch  : it  is  difficult  enough  to  be  right  in 
form,  if  you  attend  to  that  only  ; but  when  you  have  to  at- 
tend, at  the  same  moment,  to  a much  more  subtle  thing  than 
the  form,  the  difficulty  is  strangely  increased  ; — and  multi- 
plied almost  to  infinity  by  this  great  fact,  that,  while  form  is 
absolute,  so  that  you  can  say  at  the  moment  you  draw  any 
line  that  it  is  either  right  or  wrong,  color  is  (wholly)  relative* 
Every  hue  throughout  your  work  is  altered  by  every  touch 
that  you  add  in  other  places  ; so  that  what  was  warm  *j*  a min- 
ute ago,  becomes  cold  when  you  have  put  a hotter  color  in 
another  place  ; and  what  was  in  harmony  when  you  left  it, 

* No,  not  ‘ wholly  ’ by  any  means.  This  is  one  of  the  over-hasty 
statements  which  render  it  impossible  for  me  to  republish,  without 
more  correction  than  they  are  worth,  the  books  I wrote  before  the  year 
1860.  Color  is  no  less  positive  than  line,  considered  as  a representation 
of  fact*,  and  you  either  match  a given  color,  or  do  not,  as  you  either 
draw  a given  ellipse  or  square,  or  do  not.  Nor,  on  the  other  hand,  are 
lines,  in  their  grouping,  destitute  of  relative  influence ; — they  exalt  or 
depress  their  individual  powers  by  association  ; and  the  necessity  for 
the  correction  of  the  above  passage  in  this  respect  was  pointed  out  to 
me  by  Miss  Hill,  many  and  many  a year  ago,  when  she  was  using  the 
Elements  in  teaching  design  for  glass.  But  the  influence  of  lines  on 
each  other  is  restricted  within  narrow  limits,  while  the  sequences  of 
color  are  like  those  of  sound,  and  susceptible  of  all  the  complexity  and 
passion  of  the  most  accomplished  music. 

f J assumed  in  the  “Elements  of  Drawing”  the  reader’s  acquaintance 
with  this  and  other  ordinary  terms  of  art.  But  see  § 30  of  the  last 
chapter. 


OF  TEE  RELATION  OF  COLOR  TO  OUTLINE.  81 


becomes  discordant  as  you  set  other  colors  beside  it : so  that 
every  touch  must  be  laid,  not  with  a view  to  its  effect  at  the 
time,  but  its  effect  in  futurity,  the  result  upon  it  of  all  that  is 
afterwards  to  be  done  being  previously  considered.  You  may 
easily  understand  that,  this  being  so,  nothing  but  the  devotion 
of  life,  and  great  genius  besides,  can  make  a colorist. 

2.  But  though  you  cannot  produce  finished  colored  draw« 
ings  of  any  value,  you  may  give  yourself  much  pleasure,  and 
be  of  great  use  to  other  people,  by  occasionally  sketching  with 
a view  to  color  only ; and  preserving  distinct  statements  of 
certain  color  facts — as  that  the  harvest-moon  at  rising  was  of 
such  and  such  a red,  and  surrounded  by  clouds  of  such  and 
such  a rosy  gray  ; that  the  mountains  at  evening  were,  in 
truth,  so  deep  in  purple  ; and  the  waves  by  the  boat’s  side 
were  indeed  of  that  incredible  green.  This  only,  observe,  if 
you  have  an  eye  for  color ; but  you  may  presume  that  you 
have  this,  if  you  enjoy  color. 

3.  And,  though  of  course  you  should  always  give  as  much 
form  to  your  subject  as  your  attention  to  its  color  will  admit 
of,  remember  that  the  whole  value  of  what  you  are  about  de- 
pends, in  a colored  sketch,  on  the  color  merely.  If  the  color 
is  wrong,  every  thing  is  wrong  : just  as,  if  you  are  singing, 
and  sing  false  notes,  it  does  not  matter  how  true  the  words 
are.  If  you  sing  at  all,  you  must  sing  sweetly  ; and  if  you 
color  at  all,  you  must  color  rightly.  Give  up  all  the  form, 
rather  than  the  slightest  part  of  the  color  : just  as,  if  you  felt 
yourself  in  danger  of  a false  note,  you  would  give  up  the 
word  and  sing  a meaningless  sound,  if  you  felt  that  so  you 
could  save  the  note.  Never  mind  though  your  houses  are  all 
tumbling  down, — though  your  clouds  are  mere  blots,  and 
your  trees  mere  knobs,  and  your  sun  and  moon  like  crooked 
sixpences, — so  only  that  trees,  clouds,  houses,  and  sun  or 
moon,  are  of  the  right  colors. 

4.  Of  course,  the  collateral  discipline  to  which  you  are  sub- 
mitting— (if  you  are) — will  soon  enable  you  to  hint  something 
of  form,  even  in  the  fastest  sweep  of  the  brush  ; but  do  not 
let  the  thought  of  form  hamper  you  in  the  least,  when  you 
begin  to  make  colored  memoranda.  If  you  want  the  form  of 

6 


82 


TIIE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


the  subject,  draw  it  in  black  and  white.  If  you  want  its 
color,  take  its  color,  and  be  sure  you  have  it ; and  not  a spu- 
rious, treacherous,  half-measured  piece  of  mutual  concession, 
with  the  colors  all  wrong,  and  the  forms  still  anything  but 
right.  It  is  best  to  get  into  the  habit  of  considering  the 
colored  work  merely  as  supplementary  to  your  other  studies  ; 
making  your  careful  drawings  of  the  subject  first,  and  then  a 
colored  memorandum  separately,  as  shapeless  as  you  like,  but 
faithful  in  hue,  and  entirely  minding  its  own  business.  This 
principle,  however,  bears  chiefly  on  large  and  distant  sub- 
jects ; in  foregrounds,  and  near  studies,  the  color  cannot  be 
got  without  a good  deal  of  definition  of  form.  For  if  you  do 
not  shape  the  mosses  on  the  stones  accurately,  you  will  not 
have  the  right  quantity  of  color  in  each  bit  of  moss  pattern, 
and  then  none  of  the  colors  will  look  right ; but  it  always 
simplifies  the  work  much  if  you  are  clear  as  to  your  point  of 
aim,  and  satisfied,  when  necessary,  to  fail  of  all  but  that. 

5.  Thus  far  I have  repeated,  with  modification  of  two  sen- 
tences only,  the  words  of  my  old  “ Elements  of  Drawing  ; ” — 
words  which  I could  not  change  to  any  good  purpose,  so  far 
as  they  are  addressed  to  the  modern  amateur,  whose  mind 
has  been  relaxed,  as  in  these  days  of  licentious  pursuit  of 
pleasurable  excitement  all  our  minds  must  be,  more  or  less, 
to  the  point  of  not  being  able  to  endure  the  stress  of  whole- 
some and  errorless  labor, — (errorless,  I mean,  of  course,  only 
as  far  as  care  can  prevent  fault).  But  the  laws  of  Fesole  ad- 
dress themselves  to  no  person  of  such  temper  ; they  are  writ- 
ten only  for  students  who  have  the  fortitude  to  do  their  best ; 
and  I am  not  minded  any  more,  as  will  be  seen  in  next  chap- 
ter, while  they  have  any  store  of  round  sixpences  in  their 
pockets,  to  allow  them  to  draw  their  Sun,  Earth,  or  Moon 
like  crooked  ones. 

6.  Yet  the  foregoing  paragraphs  are  to  be  understood  also 
in  a nobler  sense.  They  are  right,  and  for  evermore  right, 
in  their  clear  enunciation  of  the  necessity  of  being  true  in 
color,  as  in  music,  note  to  note  ; and  therefore  also  in  their 
implied  assertion  of  the  existence  of  Color-Law,  recognizable 
by  all  colorists,  as  harmony  is  by  all  musicians  ; and  capable 


OF  THE  RELATION  OF  COLOR  TO  OUTLINE . 83 

of  being  so  unanimously  ascertained  by  accurate  obedience  to 
it,  that  an  ill-colored  picture  could  be  no  more  admitted  into 
the  gallery  of  any  rightly  constituted  Academy,  or  Society  of 
Painters,  than  a howling  dog  into  a concert. 

7.  I say,  observe,  that  Color-Law  may  be  ascertained  by 
accurate  obedience  to  it ; not  by  theories  concerning  it.  No 
musical  philosophy  will  ever  teach  a girl  to  sing,  or  a master 
to  compose  ; and  no  color-philosophy  will  ever  teach  a man  of 
science  to  enjoy  a picture,  or  a dull  painter  to  invent  one. 
Nor  is  it  prudent,  in  early  practice,  even  to  allow  the  mind  to 
be  influenced  by  its  preferences  and  fancies  in  color,  however 
delicate.  The  first  thing  the  student  has  to  do  is  to  enable  him- 
self to  match  any  color  when  he  sees  it  ; and  the  effort  which 
he  must  make  constantly,  for  many  a day,  is  simply  to  match 
the  color  of  natural  objects  as  nearly  as  he  can. 

And  since  the  mightiest  masters  in  the  world  cannot  match 
these  quite,  nor  any  but  the  mightiest  match  them,  even  nearly  ; 
the  young  student  must  be  content,  for  many  and  many  a 
day,  to  endure  his  own  deficiencies  with  resolute  patience,  and 
lose  no  time  in  hopeless  efforts  to  rival  what  is  admirable  in 
art,  or  copy  what  is  inimitable  in  nature. 

8.  And  especially,  he  must  for  a long  time  abstain  from  at- 
taching too  much  importance  to  the  beautiful  mystery  by 
which  the  blended  colors  of  objects  seen  at  some  distance 
charm  the  eye  inexplicabty.  The  day  before  yesterday,  as  I 
was  resting  in  the  garden,  the  declining  sunshine  touched  just 
the  points  of  the  withered  snapdragons  on  its  wall.  They 
never  had  been  any  thing  very  brilliant  in  the  w^ay  of  snap- 
dragons, and  were,  when  one  looked  at  them  close,  only  wasted 
and  much  pitiable  ruins  of  snapdragons  ; but  this  Enid-like 
tenderness  of  their  fading  gray,  mixed  with  what  remnant  of 
glow  they  could  yet  raise  into  the  rosy  sunbeams,  made  them, 
at  a little  distance,  beautiful  beyond  all  that  pencil  could  ever 
follow.  But  you  are  not  to  concern  yourself  with  such  snap- 
dragons yet,  nor  for  a long  while  yet. 

Attempt  at  first  to  color  nothing  but  what  is  well  within 
sight,  and  approximately  copiable  but  take  a group  of  ob- 
jects always,  not  a single  one  ; outline  them  with  the  utmost 


84 


TEE  LAWS  OF  FES  OLE. 


possible  accuracy,  with  the  lead  ; and  then  paint  each  of  its 
own  color,  with  such  light  and  shade  as  you  can  see  in  it,  and 
produce,  in  the  first  wash,  as  the  light  and  shade  is  produced 
in  Plate  VI.,  never  retouching.  This  law  will  compel  you  to 
look  well  what  the  color  is,  before  you  stain  the  paper  with 
any : it  will  lead  you,  through  that  attention,  daily  into  more 
precision  of  eye,  and  make  all  your  experience  gainful  and 
definite. 

9.  Unless  you  are  very  sure  that  the  shadow  is  indeed  of 
some  different  color  from  the  light,  shade  simply  with  a deep- 
er, and  if  you  already  know  what  the  word  means,  a warmer, 
tone  of  the  color  you  are  using.  Darken,  for  instance,  or  with 
crocus,  ruby  with  clarissa,  heath  with  ruby  ; and,  generally, 
any  color  whatever  with  the  one  next  to  it,  between  it  and  the 
jasper.  And  in  all  mixed  colors  make  the  shade  of  them 
slightly  more  vivid  in  hue  than  the  light,  unless  you  assuredly 
see  it  in  nature  to  be  less  so.  But  for  a long  time,  do  not 
trouble  yourself  much  with  these  more  subtle  matters ; and 
attend  only  to  the  three  vital  businesses  ; — approximate  match- 
ing of  the  main  color  in  the  light, — perfect  limitation  of  it  by 
the  outline,  and  flat,  flawless  laying  of  it  over  all  the  space 
within. 

10.  For  instance,  I have  opposite  me,  by  chance,  at  this 
moment,  a pale  brown  cane-bottomed  chair,  set  against  a pale 
greenish  wall-paper.  The  front  legs  of  the  chair  are  round  ; 
the  back  ones,  something  between  round  and  square ; and  the 
cross-bar  of  the  back,  flat  in  its  own  section,  but  bent  into  a 
curve. 

To  represent  these  roundings,  squarings,  and  flattenings 
completely,  with  all  the  tints  of  brown  and  gray  involved  in 
them,  would  take  a forenoon’s  work,  to  little  profit.  But  to 
outline  the  entire  chair  with  extreme  precision,  and  then  tint 
it  with  two  well-chosen  colors,  one  for  the  brown  wood,  the 
other  for  the  yellow  cane,  completing  it,  part  by  part,  with 
gradation,  such  as  could  be  commanded  in  the  wet  color ; 
and  then  to  lay  the  green  of  the  wall  behind,  into  the  spaces 
left,  fitting  edge  to  edge  without  a flaw  or  an  overlapping, 
would  be  progressive  exercise  of  the  best  possible  kind. 


OF  THE  RELATION  OF  COLOR  TO  OUTLINE.  85 


Again,  on  another  chair  beside  me  there  is  a heap  of  books, 
as  the  maid  has  chanced  to  leave  them,  lifting  them  off  the 
table  when  she  brought  my  breakfast.  It  is  not  by  any  means 
a pretty  or  picturesque  group  ; but  there  are  no  railroad-stall 
bindings  in  it, — there  are  one  or  two  of  old  vellum,  and  some 
sober  browns  and  greens,  and  a bit  of  red  ; and,  altogether, 
much  more  variety  of  color  than  anybody  but  an  old  Venetian 
could  paint  rightly.  But  if  you  see  * any  day  such  a pleas- 
antly inconsiderate  heap  of  old  books,  then  outline  them  with 
perfect  precision,  and  then  paint  each  of  its  own  color  at 
once,  to  the  best  of  your  power,  completely  finishing  that  par- 
ticular book,  as  far  as  you  mean  to  finish  it,f  before  you  touch 
the  white  paper  with  the  slightest  tint  of  the  next, — you  will 
have  gone  much  farther  than  at  present  you  can  fancy  any 
idea,  towards  gaining  the  power  of  painting  a Lombard  tower, 
or  a Savoyard  precipice,  in  the  right  way  also, — that  is  to  say, 
joint  by  joint,  and  tier  by  tier. 

11.  One  great  advantage  of  such  practice  is  in  the  necessity 
of  getting  the  color  quite  even,  that  it  may  fit  with  precision, 
and  yet  without  any  hard  line,  to  the  piece  next  laid  on.  If 
there  has  been  the  least  too  much  in  the  brush,  it  of  course 
clogs  and  curdles  at  the  edge,  whereas  it  ought  to  be  at  the 
edge  just  what  it  is  at  the  middle,  and  to  end  there,  whatever 
its  outline  may  be,  as — Well,  as  you  see  it  does  end,  if  you 
look,  in  the  thing  you  are  painting.  Hardness,  so  called,  and 
myriads  of  other  nameless  faults,  are  all  traceable,  ultimately, 
to  mere  want  of  power  or  attention  in  keeping  tints  quiet  at 
their  boundary. 

12.  Quiet — and  therefore  keen  ; for  with  this  boundary  of 
them,  ultimately,  you  are  to  draw,  and  not  with  a black-lead 
outline  ; so  that  the  power  of  the  crags  on  the  far-away 
mountain  crest,  and  the  beauty  of  the  fairest  saint  that  stoops 
from  heaven,  will  depend,  for  true  image  of  them,  utterly  on 

* You  had  better  1 see  ’ or  find,  than  construct  them  ; — else  they  will 
always  have  a constructed  look,  somehow. 

f The  drawing  of  the  lines  that  show  the  edges  of  the  leaves,  or,  in 
the  last  example,  of  the  interlacing  in  the  cane  of  the  chair,  is  entirely 
a subsequent  process,  not  here  contemplated. 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


80 


the  last  line  that  your  pencil  traces  with  the  edge  of  its  color, 
true  as  an  arrow,  and  light  as  the  air.  In  the  meantime, 
trust  me,  everything  depends  on  the  lead  outlines  being  clear 
and  sufficient.  After  my  own  forty  years’  experience,  I find 
nearly  all  difficulties  resolve  themselves  at  last  into  the  want 
of  more  perfect  outline  : so  that  I say  to  myself — before  any 
beautiful  scene, — Alas,  if  only  I had  the  outline  of  that,  what 
a lovely  thing  I would  make  of  it  in  an  hour  or  two  ! But 
then  the  outline  would  take,  for  the  sort  of  things  I want  to 
drawT,  not  an  hour,  but  a year,  or  two  ! 

IB.  Yet  you  need  not  fear  getting  yourself  into  a like  dis- 
comfort by  taking  my  counsel.  This  sorrow  of  mine  is  be- 
cause I want  to  paint  Rouen  Cathedral,  or  St.  Mark’s,  or  a 
whole  German  town  with  all  the  tiles  on  the  roofs,  that  one 
might  know  against  what  kind  of  multitude  Luther  threw  his 
defiance.  If  you  will  be  moderate  in  your  desires  as  to  sub- 
ject, you  need  not  fear  the  oppressiveness  of  the  method  ; — 
fear  it,  however,  as  you  may,  I tell  you  positively  it  is  the  only 
method  by  wffiich  you  can  ever  force  the  Fates  to  grant  you 
good  success. 

14.  The  opposite  plate,  VII.,  will  give  you  an  idea  of  the 
average  quantity  of  lines  which  Turner  used  in  any  landscape 
sketch  in  his  great  middle  time,  whether  he  meant  to  color  it 
or  not.  He  made  at  least  a hundred  sketches  of  this  kind  for 
one  that  he  touched  with  color  : nor  is  it  ever  possible  to  dis- 
tinguish any  difference  in  manner  between  outlines  (on  white 
paper)  intended  for  color,  or  only  for  notation  : in  every  case, 
the  outline  is  as  perfect  as  his  time  admits  ; and  in  his  earlier 
days,  if  his  leisure  does  not  admit  of  its  perfection,  it  is  not 
touched  with  color  at  all.  In  later  life,  when,  as  he  after- 
wards said  of  himself,  in  woful  repentance,  “he  wanted  to 
draw  every  thing,”  both  the  lead  outline  and  the  color  dash 
became  slight  enough, — but  never  inattentive  ; nor  did  the 
lead  outline  ever  lose  its  governing  proportion  to  all  subse- 
quent work. 

15.  And  now,  of  this  outline,  you  must  observe  three 
things.  First,  touching  its  subject ; that  the  scene  -was 
worth  drawing  at  all,  only  for  its  human  interest ; and  that 


r-M-w  -H~ 


Outline  with  the  Lead. 


OF  THE  RELATION  OF  COLOR  TO  OUTLINE.  SI 


this  charm  of  inhabitation  was  always  first  in  Turner’s  mind. 
If  he  had  only  wanted  what  vulgar  artists  think  picturesque, 
he  might  have  found,  in  such  an  English  valley  as  this,  any 
quantity  of  old  tree  trunks,  of  young  tree-branches,  of  lilied 
pools  in  the  brook,  and  of  grouped  cattle  in  the  meadows, 
For  no  such  mere  picture  material  he  cares  ; his  time  is  given 
to  seize  and  show  the  total  history  and  character  of  the  spot, 
and  all  that  the  people  of  England  had  made  of  it,  and  be- 
come in  it.  There  is  the  ruined  piece  of  thirteenth-century 
abbey  ; the  rector’s  house  beside  it ; * the  gate-posts  of  the 
squire’s  avenue  above  ; the  steep  fourteenth  or  fifteenth-cen- 
tury bridge  over  the  stream  ; the  low-roofed,  square-towered 
village  church  on  the  hill  ; two  or  three  of  the  village  houses 
and  outhouses  traced  on  the  left,  omitting,  that  these  may  be 
intelligible,  the  “ row  of  old  trees,”  which,  nevertheless,  as  a 
part,  and  a principal  part,  of  the  landscape,  are  noted,  by  in- 
scription, below  ; and  will  be  assuredly  there,  if  ever  he  takes 
up  the  subject  for  complete  painting ; as  also  the  tall  group 
of  ‘ ash  ’ on  the  right,  of  which  he  is  content  at  present  merely 
to  indicate  the  place,  and  the  lightness. 

16.  Do  not  carry  this  principle  of  looking  for  signs  of  hu- 
man life  or  character,  any  more  than  you  carry  any  other 
principle,  to  the  point  of  affectation.  Whatever  pleases  and 
satisfies  you  for  the  present,  may  be  wisely  drawn  ; but  re- 
member always  that  the  beauty  of  any  natural  object  is  rela- 
tive to  the  creatures  it  has  to  please  ; and  that  the  pleasure 
of  these  is  in  proportion  to  their  reverence  and  their  under- 
standing. There  can  be  no  natural  ‘ phenomena  ’ without  the 
beings  to  whom  they  are  * phenomenal  ’ (or,  in  plainer  Eng- 
lish, things  cannot  be  apparent  without  some  one  to  whoin 
they  may  appear),  and  the  final  definition  of  Beauty  is,  the 
power  in  any  thing  of  delighting  an  intelligent  human  soul 
by  its  appearance — power  given  to  it  by  the  Maker  of  Souls. 
The  perfect  beauty  of  Man  is  summed  in  the  Arabian  excla- 
mation, “ Praise  be  to  Him  who  created  thee  ! ” and  the  per- 

* Compare,  if  by  chance  you  come  across  the  book,  the  analysis  of 
the  design  of  Turner’s  drawing  of  ‘ Heysliam  ’ in  my  old  ‘ Elements  of 
Drawing,’  page  325. 


88 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


feet  beauty  of  all  natural  things  summed  in  the  Angel’s  prom* 
ise,  “ Goodwill  towards  men.” 

17.  In  the  second  place,  observe,  in  this  outline,  that  no 
part  of  it  is  darker  or  lighter  than  any  other,  except  in  the 
moment  of  ceasing  or  disappearing.  As  the  edge  becomes 
less  and  less  visible  to  the  eye,  Turner’s  pencil  line  fades,  and 
vanishes  where  also  the  natural  outline  vanished.  But  he 
does  not  draw  his  ash  trees  in  the  foreground  with  a darker 
line  than  the  woods  in  the  distance. 

This  is  a great  and  constant  law.  "Whether  your  outline  be 
gray  or  black,  fine  or  coarse,  it  is  to  be  equal  everywhere.  Al- 
ways conventional,  it  is  to  be  sustained  throughout  in  the 
frankness  of  its  conventionalism  ; it  no  more  exists  in  nature 
as  a visible  line,  at  the  edge  of  a rose  leaf  near,  than  of  a 
ridge  of  hills  far  away.  Never  try  to  express  more  by  it  than 
the  limitation  of  forms  ; it  has  nothing  to  do  with  their 
shadows,  or  their  distances. 

18.  Lastly,  observe  of  this  Turner  outline,  there  are  some 
conditions  of  rapid  grace  in  it,  and  others  of  constructive 
effect  by  the  mere  placing  of  broken  lines  in  relative  groups, 
which,  in  the  first  place,  can  be  but  poorly  rendered  even  by 
the  engraver’s  most  painstaking  fac-simile  ; and,  in  the  sec- 
ond, cannot  be  attained  in  practice  but  after  many  years 
spent  in  familiar  use  of  the  pencil.  I.  have  therefore  given 
you  this  plate,  not  so  much  for  an  immediate  model,  as  to 
show  you  the  importance  of  outline  even  to  a painter  whose 
chief  virtue  and  skill  seemed,  in  his  finished  works,  to  consist 
in  losing  it.  How  little  this  was  so  in  reality,  you  can  only 
know  by  prolonged  attention,  not  only  to  his  drawings,  but 
to  the  natural  forms  they  represent. 

19.  For  there  were  current  universally  during  Turner's 
lifetime,*  and  there  are  still  current  very  commonly,  two  great 

* I conclude  tlie  present  chapter  with  the  statement  given  in  the  cata- 
logue I prepared  to  accompany  the  first  exhibition  of  his  works  at  Marl- 
borough House,  in  the  year  1857,  because  it  illustrates  some  points  in 
water-color  work,  respecting  which  the  student’s  mind  may  advisedly 
be  set  at  rest  before  further  procedure.  I have  also  left  the  17th  para- 
graph without  qualification,  on  account  of  its  great  importance  ; but  tka 


Pen  Outline  with  Advanced  Shade. 

Schools  of  St.  George.  Elementary  Drawing,  Thate  VIIL 


I 

J 


OF  THE  RELATION  OF  COLOR  TO  OUTLINE.  89 


errors  concerning  him  ; errors  which  not  merely  lose  sight  of 
the  facts,  but  which  are  point-blank  contradictory  of  the  facts. 
It  was  thought  that  he  painted  chiefly  from  imagination, 
when  his  peculiar  character,  as  distinguished  from  all  other 
artists,  was  in  always  drawing  from  memories  of  seen  fact. 
And  it  was  commonly  thought  that  he  was  great  only  in 
coloring,  and  could  not  draw ; whereas,  his  eminent  distinc- 
tion above  other  artists,  so  far  as  regards  execution,  was  in 
his  marvellous  precision  of  graphic  touch,  disciplined  by 
practice  of  engraving,  and  by  life-long  work  with  the  hard 
lead-pencil  point  on  white  paper. 

20.  Now  there  are  many  truths  respecting  art  which 
cannot  be  rightly  stated  without  involving  an  appearance  of 
contradiction ; and  those  truths  are  commonly  the  most 
important.  There  are,  indeed,  very  few  truths  in  any  science 
which  can  be  fully  stated  without  such  an  expression  of 
their  opposite  sides,  as  looks,  to  a person  who  has  not  grasp 
of  the  subject  enough  to  take  in  both  the  sides  at  once,  like 
contradiction.  This  law  holds  down  even  to  very  small  mi- 
nutirn  in  the  physical  sciences.  For  instance,  a person  igno- 
rant of  chemistry  hearing  it  stated,  perhaps  consecutively,  of 
hydrogen  gas,  that  it  was  “ in  a high  degree  combustible,”  and 
“ a non-supporter  of  combustion,”  would  probably  think  the 
lecturer  or  writer  was  a fool ; and  when  the  statement  thus 
made  embraces  wide  fields  of  difficult  investigation  on  both 
sides,  its  final  terms  invariably  appear  contradictory  to  a per- 
son who  has  but  a narrow  acquaintance  with  the  matter  in 
hand. 

Thus,  perhaps,  no  two  more  apparently  contradictory  state- 
ments could  be  made  in  brief  terms  than  these, — 

1.  The  perfections  of  drawing  and  coloring  are  inconsist- 

ent  with  one  another. 

2.  The  perfections  of  drawing  and  coloring  are  dependent 

upon  one  another. 

And  yet  both  these  statements  are  true. 

student  must  "be  careful  in  reading  it  to  distinguish  between  true  out- 
line, and  a linear  basis  for  future  shadow,  as  in  Plate  VIII.,  which  I put 
here  for  immediate  reference. 


90 


THE  LAWS  OF  FES  OLE. 


21.  The  first  is  true,  because,  in  order  that  color  may  be 
right,  some  of  the  markings  necessary  to  express  perfect  form 
must  be  omitted  ; and  also  because,  in  order  that  it  may  be 
right,  the  intellect  of  the  artist  must  be  concentrated  on  that 
first,  and  must  in  some  slight  degree  fail  of  the  intenseness 
necessary  to  reach  relative  truth  of  form  ; and  vice  versa. 

The  truth  of  the  second  proposition  is  much  more  com- 
monly disputed.  Observe,  it  is  a two-fold  statement.  The 
perfections  of  drawing  and  coloring  are  reciprocally  depend- 
ent upon  each  other,  so  that 

a.  No  person  can  draw  perfectly  who  is  not  a colorist. 

b.  No  person  can  color  perfectly  who  is  not  a draughts- 

man. 

22.  a.  No  person  can  draw  perfectly  who  is  not  a colorist. 
For  the  effect  of  contour  in  all  surfaces  is  influenced  in  nature 
by  gradations  of  color  as  much  as  by  gradations  of  shade  ; 
so  that  if  you  have  not  a true  eye  for  color,  you  will  judge 
of  the  shades  wrongly.  Thus,  if  you  cannot  see  the  changes 
of  hue  in  red,  you  cannot  draw  a cheek  or  lip  rightly  ; and  if 
you  cannot  see  the  changes  of  hue  in  green  or  blue,  you  can- 
not draw  a wave.  All  studies  of  form  made  with  a despiteful 
or  ignorant  neglect  of  color  lead  to  exaggerations  and  mis- 
statements of  the  form-markings  ; that  is  to  say,  to  bad 
drawing. 

23.  b.  No  person  can  color  perfectly  who  is  not  a draughts- 
man. For  brilliancy  of  color  depends,  first  of  all,  on  grada- 
tion ; and  gradation,  in  its  subtleties,  cannot  be  given  but  by 
a good  draughtsman.  Brilliancy  of  color  depends  next  on 
decision  and  rapidity  in  laying  it  on  ; and  no  person  can  lay 
it  on  decisively,  and  yet  so  as  to  fall  into,  or  approximately 
fail  into,  the  forms  required,  without  being  a thorough 
draughtsman.  And  it  is  always  necessary  that  it  should  fall 
into  a predeterminate  form,  not  merely  that  it  may  represent 
the  intended  natural  objects,  but  that  it  may  itself  take  the 
shape,  as  a patch  of  color,  which  will  fit  it  properly  to  the 
other  patches  of  color  round  about  it.  If  it  touches  them 
more  or  less  than  is  right,  its  own  color  and  theirs  will  both 
be  spoiled 


OF  THE  RELATION  OF  COLOR  TO  OUTLINE.  91 


Hence  it  follows  that  all  very  great  colorists  must  be  also 
very  great  draughtsmen.  The  possession  of  the  Pisani  Vero- 
nese will  happily  enable  the  English  public  and  the  English 
artist  to  convince  themselves  how  sincerity  and  simplicity  of 
statements  of  fact,  power  of  draughtsmanship,  and  joy  in  col- 
or, were  associated  in  a perfect  balance  in  the  great  workmen 
of  Venice  ; while  the  series  of  Turner’s  studies  which  are  now 
accessible  in  the  same  gallery  w7ill  show  them  with  what  in- 
tensity of  labor  his  power  of  draughtsmanship  had  to  be 
maintained  by  the  greatest  colorist  of  the  modern  centuries. 

24.  One  point  only  remains  to  be  generally  noticed, — that 
the  command  of  means  which  Turner  acquired  by  this  per- 
petual practice,  and  the  decision  of  purpose  resulting  from 
his  vast  power  at  once  of  memory  and  of  design,  enabled  him 
nearly  always  to  work  straight  forward  upon  his  drawings, 
neither  altering  them,  nor  using  any  of  the  mechanical  expe- 
dients for  softening  tints  so  frequently  employed  by  inferior 
water-colour  painters.  Many  traditions  indeed  are  afloat  in 
the  world  of  art  respecting  extraordinary  processes  through 
which  he  carried  his  work  in  its  earlier  stages  : and  I think 
it  probable  that,  in  some  of  his  elaborately  completed  draw- 
ings, textures  were  prepared,  by  various  mechanical  means, 
over  the  general  surface  of  the  paper,  before  the  drawing  of 
detail  was  begun.  Also,  in  the  large  drawings  of  early  date, 
the  usual  expedients  of  sponging  and  taking  out  color  by  fric- 
tion have  often  been  employed  by  him  ; but  it  appears  only 
experimentally,  and  that  the  final  rejection  of  all  such  expedi- 
ents was  the  result  of  their  trial ; for  in  all  the  rest  of  the 
national  collection  the  evidence  is  as  clear  as  it  is  copious  that 
he  went  straight  to  his  mark  : in  early  days  finishing  piece  by 
piece  on  the  white  paper  ; and,  as  he  advanced  in  skill,  laying 
the  main  masses  in  broad  tints,  and  working  the  details  over 
these  : never  effacing  or  sponging,  but  taking  every  advantage 
of  the  wetness  of  the  color,  when  first  laid,  to  bring  out  soft 
lights  with  the  point  of  the  brush,  or  scratch  out  bright  ones 
with  the  end  of  the  stick,  so  driving  the  wet  color  in  a dark 
line  to  the  edge  of  the  light, — a very  favorite  mode  of  execm 
fion  with  him.  for  three  reasons  : that  it  at  once  gave  a dark 


92 


THE  LA  WS  OF  FESOLE. 


edge,  and  therefore  full  relief,  to  the  piece  of  light ; secondly, 
that  it  admitted  of  firm  and  angular  drawing  of  forms  ; and, 
lastly,  that  as  little  color  was  removed  from  the  whole  mass 
(the  quantity  taken  from  the  light  being  only  driven  into  the 
dark),  the  quantity  of  hue  in  the  mass  itself,  as  broadly  laid, 
in  its  first  membership  with  other  masses,  was  not  much  af- 
fected by  the  detailing  process. 

25.  When  these  primary  modifications  of  the  wet  color 
had  been  obtained,  the  drawing  was  proceeded  with,  exactly 
in  the  manner  of  William  Hunt,  of  the  old  Water-color  So- 
ciety, (if  worked  in  transparent  hues,)  or  of  John  Lewis,  if  in 
opaque, — that  is  to  say,  with  clear,  firm,  and  unalterable 
touches  one  over  another,  or  one  into  the  interstices  of 
another  ; never  disturbing  them  by  any  general  wash ; using 
friction  only  where  roughness  of  surface  was  locally  re- 
quired to  produce  effects  of  granulated  stone,  mossy  ground, 
and  such  like  ; and  rarely  even  taking  out  minute  lights, 
but  leaving  them  from  the  first,  and  working  round  and 
up  to  them very  frequently  drawing  thin,  dark  outlines 
merely  by  putting  a little  more  water  into  the  wet  touches,  so 
as  to  drive  the  color  to  the  edge  as  it  dried  ; the  only  differ- 
ence between  his  manipulation  and  William  Hunt’s  being  in 
his  inconceivably  varied  and  dexterous  use  of  expedients  of 
this  kind, — such,  for  instance,  as  drawing  the  broken  edge 
of  a cloud  merely  by  a modulated  dash  of  the  brush,  defin- 
ing the  perfect  forms  with  a quiver  of  his  hand  ; rounding 
them  by  laying  a little  more  color  into  one  part  of  the  dash 
before  it  dried,  and  laying  the  warm  touches  of  the  light  after 
it  had  dried,  outside  of  the  edges.  In  many  cases,  the  instan- 
taneous manipulation  is  quite  inexplicable. 

26.  It  is  quite  possible,  however,  that,  even  in  the  most  ad- 
vanced stages  of  some  of  the  finished  drawings,  they  may  have 
been  damped,  or  even  fairly  put  under  water,  and  wetted 
through  ; nay,  they  may  even  have  been  exposed  to  strong 
currents  of  water,  so  as  to  remove  superfluous  color  without 
defiling  the  tints  anywhere  ; only  most  assuredly  they  never 
received  any  friction  such  as  would  confuse  or  destroy  the 
edges  and  purity  of  separate  tints.  And  all  I can  assert  is, 


OF  TEE  RELATION  OF  COLOR  TO  OUTLINE.  03 


that  in  the  national  collection  there  is  no  evidence  of  any  such 
processes.  In  the  plurality  of  the  drawings  the  evidence  is, 
on  the  contrary,  absolute,  that  nothing  of  the  kind  has  taken 
place  ; the  greater  number  being  executed  on  leaves  of  books, 
neither  stretched  nor  moistened  in  any  way  whatever  ; or  else 
on  little  bits  of  gray  paper,  often  folded  in  four,  and  as  often 
with  the  colored  drawings  made  on  both  sides  of  a leaf.  The 
coarser  vignettes  are  painted  on  sheets  of  thin  drawing-paper  ; 
the  finer  ones  on  smooth  cardboard,  of  course  without  wash- 
ing or  disturbing  the  edges,  of  which  the  perfect  purity  is 
essential  to  the  effect  of  the  vignette. 

27.  I insist  on  this  point  at  greater  length,  because,  so  far 
as  the  direct  copying  of  Turner’s  drawings  can  be  useful  to 
the  student  (working  from  nature  with  Turner’s  faithfulness 
being  the  essential  part  of  his  business),  it  will  be  so  chiefly  as 
compelling  him  to  a decisive  and  straightforward  execution. 
I observed  that  in  the  former  exhibition  the  students  gener- 
ally selected  those  drawings  for  study  wrhich  could  be  ap- 
proximately imitated  by  the  erroneous  processes  of  modern 
water  color ; and  which  were  therefore  exactly  those  that 
showed  them  least  of  Turner’s  mind,  and  taught  them  least  of 
his  methods. 

The  best  practice,  and  the  most  rapid  appreciation  of  Tur- 
ner, wfill  be  obtained  by  accurately  copying  his  sketches  in 
body  color  on  gray  paper  ; and  when  once  the  method  is  un- 
derstood, and  the  resolution  made  to  hold  by  it,  the  student 
will  soon  find  that  the  advantage  gained  is  in  more  directions 
than  one.  For  the  sum  of  work  which  he  can  do  will  be  as 
much  greater  in  proportion  to  his  decision,  as  it  will  be  in 
each  case  better,  and,  after  the  first  efforts,  more  easily  done. 
He  may  have  been  appalled  by  the  quantity  which  he  sees 
that  Turner  accomplished  ; but  he  will  be  encouraged  when 
he  finds  how  much  any  one  may  accomplish  who  does  not 
hesitate,  nor  repent.  An  artist’s  nerve  and  power  of  mind  are 
lost  chiefly  in  deciding  what  to  do,  and  in  effacing  what  he 
has  done : it  is  anxiety,  not  labor,  that  fatigues  him  ; and 
vacillation,  not  difficulty  that  hinders  him.  And  if  the  stu- 
dent feels  doubt  respecting  his  own  decision  of  mind,  and 


94 


THE  LAWS  OF  FES  OLE. 


questions  the  possibility  of  gaining  the  habit  of  it,  let  him  be 
assured  that  in  art,  as  in  life,  it  depends  mainly  on  simplicity 
of  purpose.  Turner’s  decision  came  chiefly  of  his  truthful- 
ness ; it  was  because  he  meant  always  to  be  true,  that  he  was 
able  always  to  be  bold.  And  you  will  find  that  you  may  gain 
his  courage,  if  you  will  maintain  his  fidelity.  If  you  want 
only  to  make  your  drawing  fine,  or  attractive,  you  may  hesi- 
tate indeed,  long  and  often,  to  consider  whether  your  faults 
■will  be  forgiven,  or  your  fineries  perceived.  But  if  you  wxmt 
to  put  fair  fact  into  it,  you  will  find  the  fact  shape  it  fairly  for 
you  ; and  that  in  pictures,  no  less  than  in  human  life,  they 
•who  have  once  made  up  their  minds  to  do  right,  will  have 
little  place  for  hesitation,  and  little  cause  for  repentance. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

OF  MAP  DliAWING. 

1.  Of  all  the  principles  of  Art  which  it  has  been  my  en- 
deavor throughout  life  to  inculcate,  none  are  so  important 
and  few  so  certain,  as  that  which  modern  artists  have  chiefly 
denied, — that  Art  is  only  in  her  right  place  and  office  -when 
she  is  subordinate  to  use  ; that  her  duty  is  always  to  teach, 
though  to  teach  pleasantly  ; and  that  she  is  shamed,  not 
exalted,  when  she  has  only  graces  to  display,  instead  of  truths 
to  declare, 

2.  I do  not  know  if  the  Art  of  Poetry  has  ever  been  really 
advanced  by  the  exercise  of  youth  in  writing  nonsense  verses  ; 
but  I know  that  the  Art  of  Painting  will  never  be  so,  by  the 
practice  of  drawing  nonsense  lines  ; and  that  not  only  it  is 
easy  to  make  every  moment  of  time  spent  in  the  elementary 
exercises  of  Art  serviceable  in  other  directions  ; but  also  it 
will  be  found  that  the  exercises  which  are  directed  most 
clearly  to  the  acquisition  of  general  knowledge,  will  be  swift- 
est in  their  discipline  of  manual  skill,  and  most  decisive  in 
their  effect  on  the  formation  of  taste. 

3.  It  will  be  seen,  in  the  sequel  of  the  Laws  of  Fesole,  that 


OF  MAP  BRA  WING. 


95 


every  exercise  in  the  book  has  the  ulterior  object  of  fixing  in 
the  student’s  mind  some  piece  of  accurate  knowledge,  either 
in  geology,  botany,  or  the  natural  history  of  animals.  The 
laws  which  regulate  the  delineation  of  these,  are  still  more 
stern  in  their  application  to  the  higher  branches  of  the  arts 
concerned  with  the  history  of  the  life,  and  symbolism  of  the 
thoughts,  of  Man  ; but  the  general  student  may  more  easily 
learn,  and  at  first  more  profitably  obey  them,  in  their  gentler 
authority  over  inferior  subjects. 

4.  The  beginning  of  all  useful  applications  of  the  graphic 
art  is  of  course  in  the  determination  of  clear  and  beautiful 
forms  for  letters  ; but  this  beginning  has  been  invested  by  the 
illuminator  with  so  many  attractions,  and  permits  so  danger- 
ous a liberty  to  the  fancy,  that  I pass  by  it,  at  first,  to  the 
graver  and  stricter  work  of  geography.  For  our  most  service- 
able practice  of  which,  some  modifications  appear  to  me  de- 
sirable in  existing  modes  of  globe  measurement : these  I must 
explain  in  the  outset,  and  request  the  student  to  familiarize- 
himself  with  them  completely  before  going  farther. 

5.  On  our  ordinary  globes  the  360  degrees  of  the  equator 
are  divided  into  twenty-four  equal  spaces,  representing  the 
distance  through  which  any  point  of  the  equator  passes  in  an 
hour  of  the  day  : each  space  therefore  consisting  of  fifteen  de- 
grees. 

This  division  will  be  retained  in  St.  George’s  schools  ; but 
it  appears  to  me  desirable  to  give  the  student  a more  clear  and 
consistent  notion  of  the  length  of  a degree  than  he  is  likely  to 
obtain  under  our  present  system  of  instruction.  I find,  for  in- 
stance, in  the  Atlas  published  under  the  superintendence  of 
the  Society  for  the  Diffusion  of  Useful  Knowledge,*  that,  in 
England  and  Ireland,  a degree  contains  69.14  English  miles  ; 
in  Kussia,  69.15  ; in  Scotland,  69.1  ; in  Italy,  69  ; in  Turkey, 
68.95  ; and  in  Lidia  68.8.  In  Black’s  more  elaborate  Atlas, 
the  degree  at  the  equator  is  given  as  69.6,  whether  of  longi- 
tude or  latitude,  with  a delicate  scale  of  diminution  in  the  de- 

* The  larger  Atlas  is  without  date  . the  selection  of  maps  issued  for 
the  use  of  Harrow  School  in  1856  is  not  less  liberal  in  its  views  respect- 
ing the  length  of  a degree. 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


9 6 

grees  of  latitude  to  tlie  pole,  of  wliick  the  first  terms  would 
quite  fatally  confuse  themselves  in  a young  student’s  mind  with 
the  wavering  estimates  given,  as  above  quoted,  in  more  ele- 
mentary publications. 

6.  Under  these  circumstances,  since  in  the  form  of  the  artifi- 
cial globe  we  ignore  the  polar  flatness  of  it,  I shall  also  ignore 
it  in  practical  measurement ; and  estimate  the  degrees  of  longi- 
tude at  the  equator,  and  of  latitude  everywhere,  as  always  di- 
vided into  Italian  miles,  one  to  the  minute,  sixty  to  the  de- 
gree. The  entire  circumference  of  the  earth  at  the  equator 
will  thus  be  estimated  at  21,600  miles  ; any  place  on  the  equa- 
tor having  diurnal  motion  at  the  rate  of  900  miles  an  hour. 
The  reduction,  afterwards,  of  any  required  distance  into  Eng- 
lish miles,  or  French  kilometres,  will  be  easy  arithmetic. 

7.  The  twenty-four  meridians  drawn  on  our  common  globes 
will  be  retained  on  St.  George’s  ; but  numbered  consecutively 
round  the  globe,  1 to  24,  from  west  to  east.  The  first  merid- 
ian will  be  that  through  Fesole,  and  called  Galileo’s  line  ; the 
second,  that  approximately  through  Troy,*  called  the  Ida  line. 
The  sixth,  through  the  eastern  edge  of  India,  will  be  called 
‘ the  Orient  line  ; ’ the  eighteenth,  through  the  Isthmus  of 
Vera  Cruz,  ‘the  Occident  line  ;’  and  the  twenty-fourth,  pass- 
ing nearly  with  precision,  through  our  English  Davenport,  and 
over  Dartmoor,  ‘the  Devon  line.’  Its  opposite  meridian,  the 
twelfth,  through  mid-Pacific,  will  be  called  the  Captain’s  line. 

8.  The  meridians  on  ordinary  globes  are  divided  into  lengths 
of  ten  degrees,  by  eight  circles  drawn  between  the  equator 
and  each  of  the  poles.  But  I think  this  numeration  confusing 
to  the  student,  by  its  inconsistency  with  the  divisions  of  the 
equator,  and  its  multiplication  of  lines  parallel  to  the  Arctic 
and  Tropic  circles.  On  our  St.  George’s  globes,  therefore,  the 
divisions  of  latitude  will  be,  as  those  of  longitude,  each  fif- 
teen degrees,  indicated  by  five  circles  drawn  between  each 
pole  and  the  equator. 

Calling  the  equator  by  its  own  name,  the  other  circles  will 

* Accurately,  it  passes  through  Tenedos,  thus  dividing  the  Ida  of  Zeus 
from  the  Ida  of  Poseidon  in  Samothrace.  See  ‘Eothen,’  Chapter  IV.; 
and  Dr.  Schliemann’s  Troy,  Plate  IV. 


X 

« 


a 


Perspective  of  First  Geometry. 

Schools  of  St.  George.  Elementary  Drawing-,  Plate  IX. 


OF  MAP  BRA  WING. 


97 


be  numbered  consecutively  north  and  south  ; and  called  1st, 
2nd,  etc.,  to  the  5tli,  which  will  be  that  nearest  the  Pole.  The 
first  north  circle  will  be  found  to  pass  through  the  Cape-de- 
Verde  island  of  St.  Jago  ; the  second  north  circle  will  be  the 
line  of  latitude  on  our  present  globes  passing  approximately 
through  Cairo  ; the  third  will  as  nearly  run  through  Venice  ; 
the  fourth,  almost  with  precision,  through  Christiania  ; and 
the  fifth  through  Cape  Fern,  in  Nova  Zembla.  I wish  my  stu- 
dents to  call  these  circles,  severally,  the  St.  James’s  circle,  the 
Arabian  circle,  the  Venetian  circle,  the  Christian  circle,  and 
the  Fern  circle.  On  the  southern  hemisphere,  I shall  call  the 
first  circle  St.  John’s  ; thus  enclosing  the  most  glowing  space 
of  the  tropics  between  the  lines  named  from  the  two  Sons  of 
Thunder  ; the  Natal  circle  will  divide  intelligibly  the  eastern 
coast  of  Africa,  and  preserve  the  title  of  an  entirely  true  and 
noble, — therefore  necessarily  much  persecuted, — Christian 
Bishop  ; the  St.  George’s  circle,  opposite  the  Venetian,  will 
mark  the  mid-quadrant,  reminding  the  student,  also,  that  in 
far  South  America  there  is  a Gulf  of  St.  George  ; the  Thule 
circle  will  pass  close  south  of  the  Southern  Thule  ; and  the 
Blanche  circle  (ligne  Blanche,  for  French  children),  include, 
with  Mounts  Erebus  and  Terror,  the  supposed  glacial  space  of 
the  great  Antarctic  continent. 

9.  By  this  division  of  the  meridians,  the  student,  besides 
obtaining  geographical  tenure  in  symmetrical  clearness,  will 
be  familiarized  with  the  primary  division  of  the  circle  by  its 
radius  into  arcs  of  60°,  and  with  the  subdivisions  of  such  arcs. 
And  he  will  observe  that  if  he  draws  his  circle  representing 
the  wmrld  with  a radius  of  two  inches,  (in  Figure  18,  that  it 
may  come  within  my  type,  it  is  only  an  inch  and  a half,)  let- 
tering the  Equator  q r,  the  North  Pole  p,  the  South  Pole  s,  and 
the  centre  of  the  circle,  representing  that  of  the  Earth  o ; then 
completing  the  internal  hexagon  and  dodecagon,  and  lettering 
the  points  through  which  the  Arabian  and  Christian  circles 
pass,  respectively  a and  c,  since  the  chord  q c equals  the  radius 
q o,  it  will  also  measure  two  inches,  and  the  arc  upon  it,  qac, 
somewhat  more  than  two  inches,  so  that  the  entire  circle  will 
be  rather  more  than  a foot  round. 

7 


98 


THE  LAWS  OF  FES  OLE. 


10.  Now  I want  some  enterprising  map-seller  * to  prepare 
some  school-globes,  accurately  of  such  dimension  that  the 
twenty -four-sided  figure  enclosed  in  their  circle  may  be  ex- 
actly half  an  inch  in  the  side ; and  therefore  the  twenty-four 
meridians  and  eleven  circles  of  latitude  drawn  on  it  with  ac- 
curately horizontal  intervals  of  half  an  inch  between  each  of 


the  meridians  at  the  equator,  and  between  the  circles  every- 
where. 

And,  on  this  globe,  I want  the  map  of  the  world  engraved 
in  firm  and  simple  outline,  with  the  principal  mountain 

* I cannot  be  answerable,  at  present,  for  what  such  enterprise  may 
produce.  I will  see  to  it  when  I have  finished  my  book,  if  I am  spared 
to  do  so. 


OF  MAP  DRAWING. 


09 


chains ; but  no  * rivers,  * and  no  names  of  any  country;  and 
this  nameless  chart  of  the  world  is  to  be  colored,  within  the 
Arctic  circles,  the  sea  pale  sapphire,  and  the  land  white  ; in 
the  temperate  zones,  the  sea  full  lucia,  and  the  land  pale 
emerald  ; and  between  the  tropics,  the  sea  full  violet,  and  the 
land  pale  clarissa. 


These  globes  I should  like  to  see  executed  with  extreme 
fineness  and  beauty  of  line  and  color ; and  each  enclosed  in 
a perfectly  strong  cubic  case,  with  silk  lining.  And  I hope 
that  the  time  may  come  when  this  little  globe  may  be  just  as 

* My  reason  for  this  refusal  is  that  I want  children  first  to  he  made 
to  guess  the  courses  and  sizes  of  rivers,  from  the  formation  of  the  land  ; 
and  also,  that  nothing  may  disturb  the  eyes  or  thoughts  in  fastening  on 
that  formation. 


100 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLB. 


necessary  a gift  from  the  parents  to  the  children,  in  any  gen 
tleman’s  family,  as  their  shoes  or  bonnets. 

11.  In  the  meantime,  the  letters  by  which  the  circles  are 
distinguished,  added,  in  Figure  19,  to  the  complete  series  of 
horizontal  lines  representing  them,  will  enable  the  student 
rapidly  to  read  and  learn  their  names  from  the  equator  up 
and  down.  “ St.  James’s,  Arabian,  Venetian,  Christian,  Fern; 
St.  John’s,  Natal,  St.  George’s,  Thule,  Blanche;”  — these 
names  being  recognized  always  as  belonging  no  less  to  the 
points  in  the  arcs  of  the  quadrant  in  any  drawing,  than  to  the 
globe  circles  ; and  thus  rendering  the  specification  of  forms 
more  easy.  In  such  specification,  however,  the  quadrant 
must  always  be  conceived  as  a part  of  the  complete  circle  ; 
the  lines  o q and  o r are  always  to  be  called  4 basic : ’ the  let- 
ters q p,  r p,  qs,  and  r s,  are  always  to  be  retained,  each  for 
their  own  arc  of  the  quadrant ; and  the  points  of  division  in 
the  arcs  r p and  r s distinguished  from  those  in  the  arcs  q p 
and  q s by  small,  instead  of  capital,  letters.  Thus  a triangle 
to  be  drawn  with  its  base  on  St.  George’s  circle,  and  its  apex 
in  the  North  Pole,  will  be  asked  for  simply  as  the  triangle 
g p g ; the  hexagon  with  the  long  and  short  sides,  c p,  pk, 
may  be  placed  at  any  of  the  points  by  describing  it  as  the  hexa- 
gon q a c, — j v v,  or  the  like;  and  ultimately  the  vertical  tri- 
angles on  the  great  divisional  lines  for  bases  will  need  no 
other  definition  than  the  letters,  bp,  t p,  c p,  etc. 

The  lines  Ff  vv,  etc.,  taken  as  the  diameters  of  their  re- 
spective circles,  may  be  conveniently  called,  in  any  geometri- 
cal figure  in  which  they  occur,  the  Fern  line,  the  Venetian 
line,  etc.;  and  they  are  magnitudes  which  will  be  of  great 
constructive  importance  to  us,  for  it  may  be  easily  seen,  by 
thickening  the  lines  of  the  included  squares,  that  the  square 
on  the  Venetian  line,  the  largest  that  can  be  included  in  the 
circle,  is  half  the  square  on  the  equator  ; the  square  on  the 
Christian  line,  the  square  of  the  radius,  is  again  half  of  that 
on  the  Venetian  ; and  the  square  on  the  Fern  line,  a fifth  di- 
minishing term  between  the  square  of  the  equator  and  zero. 

12.  Next,  I wish  my  pupils  each  to  draw  for  themselves 
the  miniature  hemisphere,  Plate  IX.,  Figure  1,  with  a 


OF  MAP  DBA  WING. 


101 


radius  of  an  inch  and  nine-tenths,  which  will  give  them  ap- 
proximately the  twenty-four  divisions  of  half  an  inch  each. 
Then,  verticals  are  to  be  let  fall  from  the  points  j,  a,  etc., 
numbered  1,  2,  3,  4,  and  5,  as  in  Figure  19,  and  then  the 
meridians  in  red,  with  the  pencil,  by  hand,  through  the 
points  1,  2,  etc.,  of  the  figure  ; observing  that  each  meridian 
must  be  an  elliptical,  not  a circular,  arc.  And  now  we  must 
return,  for  a moment,  to  the  fifteenth  paragraph  of  the  fourth 
chapter,  where  we  had  to  quit  our  elliptic  practice  for  other 
compass  work. 

13.  The  ellipse,  as  the  perspective  of  the  circle,  is  so  im- 
portant a natural  line  that  it  is  needful  to  be  perfectly  familiar 
with  the  look  of  it,  and  perfectly  at  ease  in  the  tracing  of  it, 
before  the  student  can  attempt  with  success  the  slightest 
architectural  or  landscape  outline.  Usually,  the  drawing  of 
the  ellipse  is  left  to  gather  itself  gradually  out  of  perspective 
studies ; but  thus  under  a disadvantage,  seldom  conquered, 
that  the  curve  at  the  narrow  extremity,  which  is  the  only  im- 
portant part  of  it,  is  always  confused  with  the  right  line  en- 
closing the  cylinder  or  circle  to  be  drawn  ; and  never  there- 
fore swept  with  delicacy  or  facility.  I wish  the  student,  there- 
fore, to  conquer  all  hesitation  in  elliptic  drawing  at  once,  by 
humbly  constructing  ellipses,  in  sufficiently  various  number, 
large  and  small,  with  two  pins’  heads  and  a thread  ; and 
copying  these  with  the  lead,  first,  very  carefully,  then  fasten- 
ing the  lead  line  with  pencil  and  color. 

This  practice  should  be  especially  directed  to  the  extremi- 
ties of  the  narrow  and  long  elliptic  curves,  as  the  beauty  of 
some  of  the  finest  architecture  depends  on  the  perspective  of 
this  form  in  tiers  of  arches  ; while  those  of  the  shores  of  lakes, 
and  bending  of  streams,  though  often  passing  into  other  and 
more  subtle  curves,  will  never  be  possible  at  all  until  the 
student  is  at  ease  in  this  first  and  elementary  one. 

14.  Returning  to  our  globe  work,  on  the  assumption  that 
the  pupil  will  prepare  for  it  by  this  more  irksome  practice,  it 
is  to  be  noted  that,  for  geographical  purposes,  we  must  so  far 
conventionalize  our  perspective  as  to  surrender  the  modifica- 
tions produced  by  looking  at  the  globe  from  near  points  of 


102 


THE  LAWS  OF  FJtSOLE. 


sight ; and  assume  that  the  perspectives  of  the  meridians  are 
orthographic,  as  they  would  be  if  the  globe  were  seen  from 
an  infinite  distance ; and  become,  practically,  when  it  is  re- 
moved to  a moderate  one.  The  real  perspectives  of  the  me- 
ridians, drawn  on  an  orange  six  feet  off,  would  be  quite  too 
subtle  for  any  ordinary  draughtsmanship  ; and  there  would 
be  no  end  to  the  intricacy  of  our  map  drawing  if  we  were  to 
attempt  them,  even  on  a larger  scale.  I assume,  therefore, 
for  our  map  work,  that  the  globe  may  be  represented,  when 
the  equator  is  level,  with  its  eleven  circles  of  latitude  as  hori- 
zontal lines  ; and  the  eleven  visible  meridians,  as  portions  of 
five  vertical  ellipses,  with  a central  vertical  line  between  the 
poles. 

15.  When  the  student  has  completely  mastered  the  draw- 
ing, and,  if  it  may  be  so  called,  the  literature,  of  this  element- 
ary construction,  he  must  advance  another,  and  a great  step, 
by  drawing  the  globe,  thus  divided,  with  its  poles  at  any 
angle,  and  with  any  degree  of  longitude  brought  above  the 
point  o. 

The  placing  the  poles  at  an  angle  will  at  once  throw  all 
the  circles  of  latitude  into  visible  perspective,  like  the  merid- 
ians, and  enable  us,  when  it  may  be  desirable,  to  draw  both 
these  and  the  meridians  as  on  a transparent  globe,  the  arcs 
of  them  being  traceable  in  completeness  from  one  side  of  the 
equator  to  the  other. 

16.  The  second  figure  in  Plate  IX.  represents  the  globe- 
lines  placed  so  as  to  make  Jerusalem  the  central  point  of  its 
visible  hemisphere.*  A map  thus  drawn,  whether  it  include 
the  entire  hemisphere  or  not,  will  in  future  be  called  ‘ Polar  ’ 
to  the  place  brought  above  the  point  o ; and  the  maps  which 
I wish  my  students  to  draw  of  separate  countries  will  always 
be  constructed  so  as  to  be  polar  to  some  approximately  cen- 
tral point  of  chief  importance  in  those  countries  ; generally, 
if  possible,  to  their  highest  or  historically  most  important 
mountain  ; — otherwise,  to  their  capital,  or  their  oldest  city,  or 
the  like.  Thus  the  map  of  the  British  Islands  will  be  polar 

* The  meridians  in  this  figure  are  given  from  that  of  Fc  sole,  roughly 
taking  the  long,  of  Jerusalem  35  E,,  from  Greenwich  ; and  lat.  32  N. 


OF  MAP  1)R A WING . 


103 


to  Scawfell  Pikes,  the  highest  rock  in  England  : Switzerland 
will  be  polar  to  Monte  Eosa,  Italy  to  Eome,  and  Greece  to 
Argos. 

17.  This  transposition  of  the  poles  and  meridians  must  be 
prepared  for  the  young  pupil,  and  for  all  unacquainted  with 
the  elements  of  mathematics,  by  the  master  : but  the  class  of 
students  for  whom  this  book  is  chiefly  written  will  be  able,  I 
think  without  difficulty,  to  understand  and  apply  for  them- 
selves the  following  principles  of  construction. 

If  p and  s,  Figure  20,  be  the  poles  of  the  globe  in  its  noi> 


P 


mal  position,  the  line  of  sight  being  in  the  direction  of  the 
dotted  lines,  tangential  to  the  circle  at  p and  s ; and  if  we 
then,  while  the  line  of  sight  remains  unchanged,  move  the 
pole  p to  any  point  p,  and  therefore,  (the  centre  of  the  globe 
remaining  fixed  at  o,)  the  pole  s to  the  opposite  extremity  of 
the  diameter,  s ; and  if  a b be  the  diameter  of  any  circle  of 
latitude  on  the  globe  thus  moved,  such  diameter  being  drawn 
between  the  highest  and  lowest  points  of  that  circle  of  lati- 
tude in  its  new  position,  it  is  evident  that  on  the  hemispher- 
ical surface  of  the  globe  commanded  by  the  eye,  the  declined 
pole  p will  be  seen  at  the  level  of  the  line  p p ; the  levels  b b, 


104 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


a a will  be  the  upper  and  lower  limits  of  the  perspective  ar<s 
of  the  given  circle  of  latitude  ; the  centre  of  that  curve  will 
be  at  the  level  c c ; and  its  lateral  diameter,  however  we 
change  the  inclination  of  its  vertical  one,  will  be  constant.* 

18.  On  these  data,  the  following  construction  of  a map  of 
the  hemisphere  to  be  made  polar  to  a given  place,  will  be,  I 
think,  intelligible, — or  at  the  very  least,  practicable  ; which  is 
all  that  at  present  we  require  of  it. 

Let  p and  s,  Figure  21,  be  the  original  poles  ; let  the  arc 


Through  the  point  o,  (which  I need  not  in  future  letter,  it 
being  in  our  figures  always  the  mid-point  between  q and  r, 
and  theoretically,  the  centre  of  the  earth,)  draw  the  line  ter- 
minated by  the  ball  and  arrow-point,  perpendicular  to  x y. 
This  is  to  be  called  the  ‘ stellar  line  ’ of  the  given  place  x.  In 
the  map  made  polar  to  x,  this  line,  if  represented,  will  coin- 
cide with  the  meridian  of  x,  but  must  not  be  confused  with 
that  meridian  in  the  student’s  mind. 

19.  Place  now  the  figure  so  as  to  bring  the  stellar  line  ver- 
tical, indicating  it  well  by  its  arrow-head  and  ball,  which  on 

* Always  remembering  that  the  point  of  sight  is  at  an  infinite  distance, 
else  the  magnitude  of  this  diameter  would  be  affected  by  the  length  ol 
the  interval  c o. 


p q s be  the  meridian 
of  the  place  to  which 
the  map  is  to  be  made 
polar ; and  let  x be 
the  place  itself.  From 
x draw  the  diam- 
eter x y,  which  repre- 


& sents  a circle  to  be 
called  the  £ equatorial 
line  ’ of  the  given 
place  ; and  which  is 


Fig.  21. 


^ of  course  inclined  to 
the  real  equator  at  an 
angle  measured  by 
the  latitude  of  the 
place. 


OF  MAP  DBA  WING. 


105 


locally  polar  maps  will  point  north  and  south  for  the  given 
place,  Figure  22. 

The  equatorial  line  of  x,  (x  y,)  now  becomes  horizontal,  q 
it  is  the  real  equator,  p and  s the  real  poles,  and  the  given 
place  to  which  the  map  is  to  be  made  polar  is  at  x.  The  line 
of  sight  remains  in  the  direction  of  the  dotted  lines. 

20.  As  the  student  reads,  let  him  construct  and  draw  the 
figures  himself  care- 
fully. There  is  not 
the  smallest  hurry 
about  the  business, 

(and  there  must  be 
none  in  any  busi- 
ness he  means  to  be 
well  done)  ; all  that 
we  want  is  clear  un- 
derstanding, and 
fine  drawing.  And  I 
multiply  my  figures, 
not  merely  to  make 
myself  understood, 
but  as  exercises  in 
drawing  to  be  suc- 
cessively copied.  And 
the  firm  printing  of 
the  letters  * is  a part  of  this  practice,  taking  the  place  of  the 
more  irksome  exercise  recommended  in  my  first  ‘ Elements  of 
Drawing,’  p.  20.  Be  careful,  also,  that  they  shall  be  not  only 
clear  and  neat,  but  perfectly  upright.  You  will  draw  palaces 
and  towers  in  truer  stability  after  drawing  letters  uprightly  ; 
and  the  position  of  the  letter, — as,  for  instance,  in  the  two  last 
figures, — is  often  important  in  the  construction  of  the  diagram. 

21.  Having  fixed  the  relations  of  these  main  lines  well  in 
his  mind,  the  student  is  farther  to  learn  these  two  definitions. 


Fig.  2‘i. 


* By  a mistake  of  the  engraver,  the  small  letters,  though  all  printed 
by  myself  in  Roman  form,  have  been  changed,  throughout  the  figures 
in  this  chapter,  into  italics.  But  in  copying  them,  let  them  all  be  care* 
fully  printed  in  Roman  type. 


106 


THE  LAWS  OF  FES  OLE. 


I.  The  ‘ Equatorial  line  ’ of  any  place  is  the  complete  circle 
of  the  circumference  of  the  world  passing  through  that  place, 
in  a plane  inclined  to  the  plane  of  the  equator  at  an  angle 
measured  by  the  degrees  of  the  latitude  of  the  place. 

II.  The  * Stellar  line  5 of  any  place  is  a line  drawn  through 
the  centre  of  the  Earth  perpendicular  to  the  equatorial  line  of 
that  place.  It  is  therefore,  to  any  such  equatorial  line  (geo- 
metrically) what  the  axis  of  the  Earth  is  to  the  equator  ; and 
though  it  does  not  point  to  the  Polestar,  is  always  in  the  ver- 
tical plane  passing  through  the  Polestar  and  place  for  which 
it  is  drawn.* 

22.  It  follows  from  these  definitions  that  if  we  were  able  to 
look  down  on  any  place  from  a point  vertically  and  exactly 
above  it,  and  its  equatorial  and  stellar  lines  were  then  visible 
to  us,  drawn,  the  one  round  the  Earth,  and  the  other  through 
it,  they  would  both  appear  as  right  lines,  forming  a cross,  the 
equatorial  line  running,  at  the  point  of  intersection,  east  and 
west ; and  the  stellar,  north  and  south. 

23.  Now  all  the  maps  which  I hope  to  prepare  for  St. 
George’s  schools  wuli  be  constructed,  not  by  circles  of  latitude 
and  meridians,  but  as  squares  of  ten,  twenty,  or  thirty  degrees 
in  the  side,  quartered  into  four  minor  squares  of  five,  ten,  or 
fifteen  degrees  in  the  side,  by  the  cross  formed  by  the  equa- 
torial and  stellar  line  of  the  place  to  which  the  map  is  said  to 
be  : polar  ; ’ — which  place  will  therefore  be  at  the  centre  of 
the  square.  And  since  the  arc  of  a degree  on  the  equatorial 
line  is  as  long  as  the  arc  of  a degree  on  the  equator,  and  since 
the  stellar  line  of  a place  on  a polar  map  coincides  with  the 
meridian  of  that  place,  the  measurements  of  distance  along 
each  of  the  four  arms  of  the  cross  will  be  similar,  and  the  en- 
largements of  terrestrial  distance  expressed  by  them,  in  equal 
proportions. 

24.  I am  obliged  to  introduce  the  terms  “ at  the  point  of 
intersection,”  in  § 22,  because,  beyond  the  exact  point  of  in- 
tersection, the  equatorial  line  does  not  run  east  and  west,  in 
the  ordinary  geographical  sense.  Note  therefore  the  follow*- 

* The  Polestar  is  assumed,  throughout  all  our  work,  to  indicate  the 
true  North. 


OF  MAP  DRAWING. 


101 


ing  conditions  separating  this  from  the  usually  drawn  terres* 
trial  lines. 

If,  from  the  eastern  and  western  gates  of  a city,  two  trav- 
ellers set  forth  to  walk,  one  due  east,  and  the  other  due  west, 
they  would  meet  face  to  face  after  they  had  walked  each  the 
semicircle  of  the  earth-line  in  their  city’s  latitude. 

But  if  from  the  eastern  and  western  gates  they  set  forth  to 
walk  along  their  city’s  equatorial  line,  they  would  only  meet 
face  to  face  after  they  had  each  walked  the  full  semicircle  of 
the  Earth’s  circumference. 

And  if,  from  the  eastern  and  western  gates  of  their  city, 
they  were  able  to  set  forth,  to  walk  along  the  lines  used  as 
lines  of  measurement  on  its  polar  map,  they  would  meet  no 
more  forever. 

For  these  lines,  though  coinciding,  the  one  with  its  merid- 
ian, and  the  other  writh  its  equatorial  line,  are  conceived 
always  as  lines  drawn  in  the  air,  so  as  to  touch  the  Earth  only 
at  the  place  itself,  as  the  threads  of  a common  squaring  frame 
would  touch  the  surface  of  a globe  ; that  which  coincides 
with  the  Stellar  line  being  produced  infinitely  in  the  vertical 
plane  of  the  Polestar,  and  that  which  coincides  with  the  equa- 
torial line  produced  infinitely  at  right  angles  to  it  in  the  direc- 
tion of  the  minor  axis  of  the  Earth’s  orbit. 

25.  In  which  orbit,  calling  the  point  of  winter  solstice, 
being  that  nearest  the  Polestar,  the  North  point  of  the  orbit, 
and  that  of  the  summer  solstice  South,  the  point  of  vernal 
equinox  will  be  West,  the  point  of  autumnal  equinox  East  ; 
and  the  polar  map  of  any  place  will  be  in  general  constructed 
and  shaded  with  the  Earth  in  vernal  equinox,  and  the  place 
at  the  time  of  sunrise  to  it  on  Easter  Bay,  supposing  the  sun 
ten  degrees  above  the  horizon,  and  expressing  therefore  the 
heights  of  the  mountain  chains  accurately  by  the  length  of 
their  shadows. 

26.  Therefore,  in  now  proceeding  to  draw  our  polar  map 
for  the  given  place  x,  Figure  22,  we  have  to  bring  the  two 
poles,  and  the  place  itself,  to  the  meridian  which  coincides, 
in  our  circular  construction,  with  the  stellar  line.  Accord- 
ingly, having  got  our  construction  as  in  Figure  22,  we  let 


10S 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


fall  perpendiculars  on  the  stellar  line  from  all  the  four  points 

p,  s,  q,  and  r,  Figure 
23,  giving  us  the  four 
points  on  the  stellar 
line  p,  s,  q,  and  r. 

Then,  in  our  polar 
map,  p and  s are  the 
new  poles  correspond- 
ing to  p and  s ; q and 
r the  new  points  of 
the  Equator  corre- 
sponding to  q and  r ; 
and  the  place  to  which 
the  map  is  polar,  x, 
will  now  be  in  the 
centre  of  the  map  at 
the  point  usually  let- 
tered o. 

27.  Now  this  con- 
struction is  entirely 
general,  and  the  two 
zigzags,  p p s s and  r 
r q q,  must  always  be 
drawn  in  the  same 
way  for  the  poles  and 
any  given  circle  of 
latitude,  as  well  as  for 
the  Equator  ; — only 
if  the  more  lightly- 
drawn  zigzag  be  for 
a north  or  south  circle 
of  latitude,  it  w7ill  not 
be  symmetrical  on 
both  sides  of  the  line 
x y.  Therefore,  re- 
moving the  (for  the 
moment  unnecessary)  line  x y from  the  construction,  and 
drawing,  instead  of  the  Equator  q r,  any  circle  of  latitude  l m, 


OF  MAP  DRAWING. 


109 


—I  and  m are  the  corresponding  points  of  that  circle  in  our 
polar  map,  and  we  get  the  entirely  general  construction, 
Figure  24,  in  which  the  place  to  which  the  map  is  polar,  being 
now  at  the  centre  of  the  circle,  is  lettered  x,  because  it  is  not 
now  the  centre  of  the  earth  between  q and  k,  but  the  point  x, 
on  the  surface  of  the  earth,  brought  round  to  coincide  with 
it. 

28.  And  now  I should  like  the  student  to  fix  the  letters  at- 
tached to  these  constructions  in  his  mind,  as  belonging,  not 
only  to  their  respective  circles,  but  always  to  the  same  points 
in  these  circles.  Thus  the  letter  x will  henceforward,  after  we 
have  once  finished  the  explanatory  construction  in  the  pres- 
ent chapter,  always  signify  the  point  to  which  the  map  is  po- 
lar, and  y its  exactly  antipodal  point  on  the  earth’s  surface,  half 
round  the  equatorial  line.  If  we  have  to  speak  in  more  detail 
of  the  equatorial  line  as  a complete  circle,  it  will  be  lettered 
x,  e,  y,  w,  the  letters  e and  w being  at  its  extreme  eastern  and 
western  points,  in  relation  to  x.  And  since  at  these  points  it 
intersects  the  Equator,  the  Equator  will  be  also  lettered  q,  e, 
k,  w,  the  points  e and  w being  identical  in  both  circles,  and 
the  point  q always  in  the  meridian  of  x.  Any  circle  of  lati- 
tude other  than  the  stated  eleven  will  be  lettered  at  its  quar- 
ters, l,  l 1,  l 2,  l 3,  l 4,  the  point  l being  that  on  the  merid- 
ian of  x ; and  any  full  meridian  circle  other  than  one  of  the 
stated  twelve  will  be  lettered  m n,  the  point  m being  that  on 
the  Equator  nearest  x,  and  n its  opposite. 

29.  And  nowr  note  carefully  that  in  drawing  the  globe,  or 
any  large  part  of  it,  the  meridian  circles  and  latitude  circles 
are  always  to  be  drawn,  with  the  lead,  full  round,  as  if  the 
globe  were  transparent.  It  is  only  thus  that  the  truth  of 
their  delicate  contact  with  the  limiting  circle  can  be  reached. 
Then  the  visible  part  of  the  curve  is  to  be  traced  with  pencil 
and  color,  and  that  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  globe,  and 
therefore  invisible,  to  be  either  effaced,  or  indicated  by  a 
dotted  line. 

Thus,  in  Figure  25, 1 complete  the  construction  from  Figure 
23  by  first  producing  the  lines  k r.  q q,  to  meet  the  circle  on 
both  sides,  so  as  to  give  me  a complete  feeling  of  the  sym- 


110 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


metry  of  the  entire  space  within  which  my  elliptic  curve  must 
be  drawn  ; and  then  draw  it  round  in  complete  sweep,  as 

steadily  as  I can,  cor- 
recting it  into  a true 
ellipse  by  as  much 
measurement  as  may 
be  needful,  and  with 
the  best  fastidiousness 
of  my  sight.  Once 
the  perfect  ellipse 
drawn,  the  question, 
which  half  of  it  is 
visible,  depends  on 
whether  we  intend  the 
North  or  South  pole 
to  be  visible.  If  the 
North,  the  lower  half 
of  the  ellipse  is  the 
perspective  of  the 
visible  half  of  the 
Equator  ; and  if  the 
South,  vice  versa,  the 
upper  half  of  the 
ellipse. 

30.  But  the  draw- 
ing becomes  more 
difficult  and  subtle 
when  we  deal  with 
the  perspective  of  a 
line  of  latitude,  as  l m 
(Eigure  24).  For  on 
completing  this  con- 
struction in  the  same 
manner  as  Figure  23 
is  completed  in  Fig- 
ure 25,  we  shall  find 
the  ellipse  does  not  now  touch  the  circle  with  its  extremities, 
but  with  some  part  of  its  sides.  In  Figure  26,  I remove  the 


/ Y 

XT? 

g\ 

1 

Fig. 

S 

q / 

i 

25. 

m / 

Am 

T \ 

If 

Fig. 

26. 

OF  MAP  DRA  WING . 


Ill 


constructing  lines  from  Figure  24,  and  give  only  the  neces- 
sary limiting  ones,  m m and  l 1,  produced : the  ellipse  being 
now  drawn  symmetrically  between  these,  so  as  to  touch 
the  circle,  it  will  be  seen  that  its  major  axis  falls  beneath  the 
point  of  contact,  and  would  have  to  be  carried  beyond  the 
ellipse  if  it  were  to  meet  the  circle.  On  the  small  scale  of 
these  figures,  and  in  drawing  large  circles  of  latitude,  the  in- 
terval seems  of  little  importance  ; yet  on  the  beautiful  drawl- 


ing of  it  depends  the  right  expression  of  all  rounded  things 
whose  surface  is  traversed  by  lines — -from  St.  Peter’s  dome  to 
an  acorn  cup.  In  Figure  27  1 give  the  segment  of  circle  from 
p to  y as  large  as  my  page  allows,  with  the  semi-ellipse  of  the 
semicircle  of  latitude  c m.  The  point  of  contact  with  the 
circle  is  at  z ; the  axis  major,  drawn  through  c,  terminates  at 
wt,  making  u w equal  to  cm;  and  the  pretty  meeting  of  the 
curves  w z and  y z like  the  top  of  the  rudder  of  a Venetian 
canal  boat  (the  water  being  at  the  level  x y),  becomes  dis- 
tinctly visible. 


112 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


The  semi-major  axis  u w is  exactly  equal  to  c m,  as  in  Figure 
25  the  entire  major  axis  is  equal  to  l m in  Figure  24. 

31.  Lastly,  if  c m cross  the  stellar  line,  as  in  all  figures 
hitherto  given,  the  ellipse  always  touches  the  circle,  and  the 
portion  of  it  beyond  z is  invisible,  on  the  other  side  of  the 
globe,  when  we  reduce  the  perspective  figure  to  a drawing. 
But,  as  we  draw  the  circles  of  latitude  smaller,  the  interval 
between  z and  w increases,  and  that  between  z and  m dimin- 
ishes, until  z and  m coincide  on  the  stellar  line,  and  the  ellipse 
touches  the  circle  with  the  extremity  of  its  minor  axis.  As  m 

draws  still  farther  back 
towards  p,  the  ellipse 
detaches  itself  from  the 
circle,  and  becomes  en- 
tirely visible  ; and  as 
we  incline  the  pole 
more  and  more  to- 
wards us,  the  ellipses 
rise  gradually  into 
sight,  become  rounder 
and  rounder  in  their 
curves,  and  at  last  pass 
into  five  concentric  cir- 
cles encompassed  by 
the  Equator  as  we  look 
vertically  down  on  the 
pole.  The  construction 
of  the  small  circle  of 
latitude  l m,  when  the  pole  is  depressed  to  p,  is  given  in 
Figure  28. 

32.  All  this  sounds  at  first  extremely  dreadful : but,  sup- 
posing the  system  of  the  Laws  of  Fesole  generally  approved 
and  adopted,  every  parish  school  may  soon  be  furnished  with 
accurate  and  beautiful  drawings  of  the  divided  sphere  in  vari- 
ous positions  ; and  the  scholars  led  on  gradually  in  the  prac- 
tice of  copying  them,  having  always,  for  comparison,  the  solid 
and  engraved  artificial  globe  in  their  hands.  Once  intelli- 
gently masters  of  this  Earth-perspective,  there  remain  no 


OF  MAP  DRAWING. 


113 


more  difficulties  for  them,  but  those  of  delicate  execution,  in 
the  drawing  of  plates,  or  cups,  or  baskets,  or  crowns,*  or  any 
other  more  or  less  circularly  divided  objects ; and  gradually 
they  will  perceive  concurrences  and  cadences  of  mightier  lines 
in  sea-waves,  and  mountain  promontories,  and  arcs  of  breeze- 
driven  cloud. 

33.  One  bit  of  hard  work  more,  and  we  have  done  with 
geometry  for  the  present.  We  have  yet  to  learn  howto  draw 
any  meridian  in  true  perspective,  the  poles  being  given  in  a 
vertical  line.  Let  p 
and  s,  Figure  29,  be 
the  poles,  p being  the 
visible  one.  Then  q 
m k n is  the  Equator 
in  its  perspective  rela- 
tion to  them  ; p,  the 
pole  of  the  stellar  line, 
which  line  is  here  co-  Q 
incident  with  the  me- 
ridian of  the  place  to 
which  the  map  is  polar. 

It  is  required  to  draw 
another  meridian  at  a 
given  number  of  de- 
grees distant  from  the 
meridian  of  the  place. 

34.  On  the  arc  p q,  if  the  required  meridian  is  to  the  east 
of  the  place,  or  on  the  arc  p r,  if  the  required  meridian  is  to 
the  west  of  it,  measure  an  arc  of  the  given  number  of  degrees, 

* There  are,  of  course,  other  perspective  laws,  dependent  on  the  ap- 
proach of  the  point  of  sight,  introduced  in  the  drawing  of  ordinary  ob- 
jects ; but  none  of  these  laws  are  ever  mathematically  carried  out  by 
artists,  nor  can  they  be  : every  thing  depends  on  the  truth  of  their  eyes 
and  ready  obedience  of  their  fingers.  All  the  mathematicians  in  France 
and  England,  with  any  quantity  of  time  and  every  instrument  in  their 
possession,  could  not  draw  a tress  of  wreathed  hair  in  perspective  : but 
Veronese  will  do  it,  to  practical  sufficiency,  with  half  a dozen  consecu- 
tive touches  of  his  pencil. 

8 


114 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE 


p n,  Let  fall  the  vertical  n n on  the  Equator,  draw  the  di- 
agonal m n through  o ; and  the  required  meridian  will  be  the 
visible  arc  of  the  ellipse  drawn,  so  as  to  touch  the  circle, 
through  the  four  points  pnsm.  These  four  points,  however 
placed,  will  always  be  symmetrical,  the  triangles  o p n and  o 
m s,  if  completed,  being  always  equal  and  similar,  and  the 
points  n and  m equi-distant  from  p and  s.  In  Figure  30,  1 
draw  the  curve,  showing  only  these  points  and  the  stellar- 

line  ; and  you  may,  by,  a 
little  effort,  imagine  the 
figure  to  represent  two 
cups,  or  two  kettle-drums, 
brim  to  brim,  or  rim  to 
rim.  If  }-ou  suppose  them 
so  placed  that  you  can  see 
the  inside  of  the  cup  on 
the  left,  the  north  pole  is 
visible,  and  the  left-hand 
half  of  the  ellipse.  If  you 
suppose  the  inside  of  the 
cup  on  the  right  visible, 
the  north  pole  is  visible, 
and  the  right-hand  half  of 
the  ellipse. 

35.  And  now,  if  you  have 
FlG'  30‘  really  read  and  worked 

thus  far,  with  clear  understanding,  I very  gladly  congratulate 
you  on  having  mastered  quite  the  most  important  elements  of 
perspective  in  curved  surfaces  ; a mastership  which  you  will 
find  extremely  pleasurable  in  its  consequences,  whatever  the 
difficulty  of  its  attainment.  And  in  the  meantime  you  will  with- 
out further  trouble  understand  the  construction  of  the  second 
figure  in  Plate  IX.,  which  gives  the  perspective  of  the  globe 
on  the  line  of  sight  polar  to  Jerusalem  ; assuming  the  longi- 
tude of  Jerusalem  35°  east,  from  the  meridian  of  Greenwich  ; 
but  engraving  the  St.  George’s  order  of  meridians,  with  the 
Devon,  Captains’,  Orient,  and  Occident  in  darker  line.  The 
student  may,  with  advantage,  enlarge  this  example  so  as  to 


OF  MAP  DP  A WING. 


115 


allow  an  inch  to  the  widest  interval  of  its  meridians,  and  then 
try  for  himself  to  draw  the  map  of  the  hemisphere  accurately 
on  this  projection.  If  he  succeed,  he  will  have  a true  per- 
spective view  of  the  globe,  from  the  given  point  of  sight,  a 
very  different  thing  from  a map  of  it  given  on  any  ordinary 
projection : for  in  the  common  geographical  methods,  the 
countries  and  seas  are  distorted  into  shapes,  not  only  actually 
false,  but  which  under  no  possible  conditions  they  could  ever 
assume  to  the  eye  ; while  on  this  rightly  drawn  projection, 
they  appear  as  they  do  on  the  artificial  globe  itself,  and  can- 
not therefore  involve  the  student  in  any  kind  of  misconcep- 
tion. Maps,  properly  so  called,  must  include  much  less  than 
the  surface  of  the  hemisphere  ; and  the  mode  in  which  they 
are  to  be  drawn  on  this  projection  will  be  given  in  the 
eleventh  chapter. 

36.  It  remains  only  to  be  observed  that  although  in  Eng- 
lish schools  the  Devon  and  Captains’  line  (meaning,  the  line 
of  the  great  Captains)  are  to  be  taken  for  the  first  divisions  in 
quartering  the  globe,  and  the  Orient  and  Occident  lines,  for 
us  determined  by  them,  the  degrees  of  longitude  are  to  be 
counted  from  Galileo’s  line,  the  meridian  of  Fesole.  For  if 
these  laws  of  drawing  are  ever  accepted,  as  I trust,  in  other 
schools  than  our  own,  it  seems  to  me  that  their  well-trained 
sailors  may,  waiving  false  pride  and  vulgar  jealousy,  one  day 
consent  to  estimates  of  distance  founded,  for  all,  on  the  most 
sacred  traditions  of  the  Norman,  the  Tuscan,  and  the  Argo- 
naut : founded  for  the  sailors  of  Marseilles  and  Venice — of 
Pisa  and  Amalfi — of  Salamis  and  the  Hellespont,— on  the 
eternal  lines  which  pass  through  the  Flint  of  Fesole,  and  the 
Flowers  of  Ida, 


UG 


THE  LA  WS  OF  FESOLE* 


CHAPTER  X. 

OF  LIGHT  AND  SHADE. 

1.  I do  not  doubt  that  you  can  call  into  your  mind  with 
some  distinctness  the  image  of  hawthorn  blossom  ; — whether, 
at  this  time  of  reading,  it  be  May  or  November,  I should  like 
you,  if  possible,  to  look  at  the  description  of  it  in  Proserpina 
(III.,  p.  142) ; but  you  can  certainly  remember  the  general 
look  of  it,  in  wThite  masses  among  green  leaves.  And  you 
would  never  think,  if  I put  a pencil  into  your  hand,  and  gave 
you  choice  of  colors  to  paint  it  with,  of  painting  any  part  of 
it  black. 

Your  first  natural  instinct  would  be  to  take  pure  green, 
and  lay  that  for  the  leaves  ; and  then,  the  brightest  white 
which  you  could  find  on  the  palette,  and  put  that  on  in  bosses 
for  the  buds  and  blossoms. 

2.  And  although  immediate  success  in  representation  of 
hawthorn  might  possibly  not  attend  these  efforts,  that  first 
instinctive  process  would  be  perfectly  right  in  principle. 
The  general  effect  of  hawthorn  is  assuredly  of  masses  of 
white,  laid  among  masses  of  green : and  if,  at  the  instiga- 
tion of  any  learned  drawing-master,  you  "were  to  paint  part 
of  every  cluster  of  blossoms  coal-black,  you  would  never  be 
able  to  make  the  finished  work  satisfactory  either  to  yourself, 
or  to  other  simple  people,  as  long  as  the  black  blot  remained 
there. 

3.  You  may  perhaps  think  it  unlikely  that  any  drawing- 
master  wTould  recommend  you  to  paint  hawthorn  blossom  half 
black.  Nor,  if  instead  of  hawthorn,  you  had  peach  or  apple 
blossom  to  paint,  would  you  expect  such  recommendation  for 
the  better  rendering  of  their  rose-color  ? Nor,  if  you  had  a 
gentian  to  paint,  though  its  blue  is  dark,  would  you  expect  to 
be  told  to  paint  half  the  petals  black  ? 

If,  then,  you  have  human  flesh  to  paint,  which,  though  of 
much  mingled  and  varied  hue,  is  not,  unless  sunburnt,  darker 


Appei/lavitqtje  Ltjcem  Diem  et  Tenebras  ISToctem* 
Schools  of  St.  George.  Elementary  Drawing,  Plate  X. 


OF  LIGHT  AND  SHADE. 


117 

than  peach  blossom  ; — and  of  which  the  ideal,  according  to 
all  poets,  is  that  it  should  he  white,  tinted  with  rose  ; — which 
also,  in  perfect  health  and  purity,  is  somewhat  translucent, 
certainly  much  more  so  than  either  hawthorn  buds  or  apple 
blossom — Would  you  accept  it  as  a wise  first  direction  towards 
the  rendering  of  this  more  living  and  varying  color,  to  paint 
one  side  of  a girl’s  face  black  ? You  certainly  would  not, 
unless  you  had  been  previously  beguiled  into  thinking  it 
grand  or  artistic  to  paint  things  under  ‘ bold  effects.’ 

And  yet,  you  probably  have  been  beguiled,  before  now, 
into  admiring  Raphael’s  Transfiguration,  in  which  everybody’s 
faces  and  limbs  are  half  black  ; and  into  supposing  Rembrandt 
a master  of  chiaroscuro,  because  he  can  paint  a vigorous  por- 
trait with  a black  dab  under  the  nose  ! 

4.  Both  Raphael  and  Rembrandt  are  masters,  indeed  ; but 
neither  of  them  masters  of  light  and  shade,  in  treatment  of 
which  the  first  is  always  false,  and  the  second  always  vulgar. 
The  only  absolute  masters  of  light  and  shade  are  those  who 
never  make  you  think  of  light  and  shade,  more  than  Nature 
herself  does. 

It  will  be  twenty  jrears,  however,  at  least,  before  you  can  so 
much  as  see  the  finer  conditions  of  shadow  in  masters  of  that 
calibre.  In  the  meantime,  so  please  you,  wTe  will  go  back  to 
our  hawthorn  blossom,  which  you  have  begun  quite  rightly 
by  painting  white  altogether  ; but  which  remains,  neverthe- 
less, incomplete  on  those  conditions.  However,  if  its  outline 
be  right,  and  it  detaches  itself  from  the  green  ground  like  a 
Florentine  piece  of  mosaic,  with  absolutely  true  contour  of 
clustered  petal,  and  placing  of  scattered  bud,  you  are  already 
a far  way  on  the  road  to  all  you  want  of  it. 

5.  What  more  you  exactly  want  is  now  the  question.  If 
the  image  of  the  flower  is  clear  in  your  mind,  you  will  see  it 
to  be  made  up  of  buds,  which  are  white  balls,  like  pearls  ; and 
flowers,  like  little  flattish  cups,  or  rather  saucers,  each  com- 
posed of  five  hollow  petals. 

How  do  you  know,  by  the  look  of  them,  that  the  balls  are 
convex,  and  the  cups  concave  ? How  do  you  know,  farther, 
that  the  balls  are  not  quite  round  balls,  but  a little  flat  at  the 


118 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


top  ? How  do  you  know  that  the  cups  are  not  deep,  but  as  3 
said,  flattisli,  like  saucers  ? 

You  know,  because  a certain  quantity  of  very  delicate  pale 
gray  is  so  diffused  over  the  white  as  to  define  to  the  eye  ex- 
actly the  degree  in  which  its  surfaces  are  bent ; and  the  gra- 
dations of  this  gray  are  determined  by  the  form  of  surface, 
just  as  accurately  as  the  outline  is  ; and  change  with  the  same 
mathematical  precision,  at  every  point  of  their  course.  So 
that,  supposing  the  bud  were  spherical,  which  it  is  not,  the 
gradation  of  shade  would  show  that  it  was  spherical ; and, . 
flattened  ever  so  little  though  it  be,  the  shade  becomes  differ- 
ent in  that  degree,  and  is  recognized  by  the  eye  as  the 
shade  of  a hawthorn  blossom,  and  not  of  a mere  round  glob- 
ule or  bead. 

6.  But,  for  globule,  globe,  or  grain,  small  or  great, — as 
the  first  laws  of  line  may  best  be  learned  in  the  lines  of  the 
Earth,  so  also  the  first  laws  of  light  may  best  be  learned  in 
the  light  of  the  Earth.  Not  the  hawthorn  blossom,  nor  the 
pearl,  nor  the  grain  of  mustard  or  manna, — not  the  smallest 
round  thing  that  lies  as  the  hoar-frost  on  the  ground — but 
around  it,  and  upon  it,  are  illuminated  the  laws  that  bade  the 
Evening  and  the  Morning  be  the  first  day. 

7.  So  much  of  those  laws  you  probably,  in  this  learned  cen- 
tury, know  already,  as  that  the  heat  and  light  of  the  sun  are 
both  in  a fixed  proportion  to  the  steepness  of  his  rays, — that 
they  decline  as  the  day,  and  as  the  summer  declines ; passing 
softly  into  the  shadows  of  the  Polar, — swiftly  into  those  of  the 
Tropic  night. 

But  you  probably  have  never  enough  fastened  in  your  mind3 
the  fact  that,  whatever  the  position  of  the  sun,  and  whatever 
the  rate  of  motion  of  any  point  on  the  earth  through  the 
minutes,  hours,  or  days  of  twilight,  the  meeting  of  the  mar- 
gins of  night  and  days  is  always  constant  in  the  breadth  of 
its  zone  of  gradually  expiring  light ; and  that  in  relation  to 
the  whole  mass  of  the  globe,  that  passage  from  ‘glow  to 
gloom  ’ is  as  trenchant  and  swift  as  between  the  crescent  of 
the  new  moon  and  the  dimness  of  the  “ Auld  mune  in  her 
airms.” 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE. 


119 


8.  The  dimness,  I say,  observe  ; — not  the  blackness.  Against 
the  depth  of  the  night — itself  (as  we  see  it)  not  absolute  black- 
ness,— the  obscured  space  of  the  lunar  ball  still  is  relieved  in 
pallor,  lighted  to  that  dim  degree  by  the  reflection  from  the 
Earth.  Much  more,  in  all  the  forms  which  you  will  have  to 
study  in  daylight,  the  dark  side  is  relieved  or  effaced,  by  vari- 
ously diffused  and  reflected  rays.  But  the  first  thing  you  have 
to  learn  and  remember,  respecting  all  objects  whatever  to  be 
drawn  in  light  and  shade,  is  that,  by  natural  light  of  day,  half 
of  them  is  in  light,  and  half  in  shadow ; and  the  beginning  of 
ail  light  and  shade  drawing  is  in  the  true,  stern,  and  perfect 
separation  of  these  from  each  other. 

9.  Where  you  stand,  and  therefore  whence  you  see  the  ob- 
ject to  be  drawn,  is  a quite  separate  matter  of  inquiry.  As 
you  choose,  you  may  determine  how  much  you  will  see  of  its 
dark  and  how  much  of  its  light  side  : but  the  first  thing  to 
be  made  sure  of  is  the  positive  extent  of  these  twro  great 
masses  : and  the  mode  in  which  they  are  involved  or  invaded 
at  their  edges. 

And  in  determining  this  at  first,  you  are  to  cast  entirely 
out  of  consideration  all  vestige  or  interference  of  modifying 
reflective  light.  The  arts,  and  the  morality  of  men,  are  founded 
on  the  same  primal  order ; you  are  not  to  ask,  in  morals,  what 
is  less  right  and  more,  or  less  wrong  and  more,  until  in  every 
matter  you  have  learned  to  recognize  what  is  massively  and 
totally  Bight,  from  what  is  massively  and  totally  W rong.  The 
beautiful  enhancements  of  passion  in  virtue,  and  the  subtle 
redemptions  of  repentance  in  sin,  are  only  to  be  sought,  or 
taken  account  of,  afterwards.  And  as  the  strength  and  facil- 
ity of  human  action  are  undermined  alike  by  the  ardor  of  pride 
and  the  cunning  of  exculpation,  the  work  of  the  feeblest  ar- 
tists may  be  known  by  the  vulgar  glittering  of  its  light  and  the 
far-sought  reflection  in  its  shadow. 

10.  When  the  great  separation  between  light  and  dark  has 
been  thus  determined,  the  entire  attention  of  the  student  is  to 
be  first  put  on  the  gradation  of  the  luminous  surface. 

It  is  only  on  that  surface  that  the  form  of  the  object  i3 
exactly  or  consistently  shown  ; and  the  just  distribution  of  the 


120 


THE  LAWS  OF  FJ&SOLE. 


light,  on  that  alone,  will  be  enough  to  characterize  the  subject^ 
even  if  the  shadow  be  left  wholly  untouched.  The  most  per- 
fectly disciplined  and  scientific  drawings  of  the  Tuscan  school 
consist  of  pure  outlines  on  tinted  paper,  with  the  lights  laid 
on  in  gradated  white,  and  the  darks  left  undistinguished  from 
the  ground.  The  group  of  drawings  by  Turner  to  which,  in 
the  schools  of  Oxford,  I have  given  the  title  of  the  ‘Nine 
Muses,’  consists,  in  like  manner,  of  firm  pencil  outline  on  pale 
gray  paper  ; the  expression  of  form  being  entirely  trusted  to 
lights  gradated  with  the  most  subtle  care. 

11.  But  in  elementary  work,  the  definition  of  the  dark  side 
of  the  object  against  the  background  is  to  be  insisted  upon, 
no  less  than  the  rising  of  the  light  side  of  the  object  out  of 
shadow.  For,  by  this  law,  accuracy  in  the  outline  on  both 
sides  will  be  required,  and  every  tendency  to  mystification  re- 
pressed ; whereas,  if  once  we  allow  dark  backgrounds  to  set 
off  luminous  masses,  the  errors  of  the  outline  in  the  shadow 
may  be  concealed  by  a little  graceful  manipulation  ; and  the 
drawing  made  to  bear  so  much  resemblance  in  manner  to  a 
master’s  work,  that  the  student  is  only  too  likely  to  flatter  him- 
self, and  be  praised  by  others,  for  what  is  merely  the  dissimu- 
lation of  weakness,  or  the  disguise  of  error. 

12.  Farther:  it  is  of  extreme  importance  that  no  time  should 
be  lost  by  the  beginner  in  imitating  the  qualities  of  shade  at- 
tained by  great  masters,  before  he  has  learned  where  shadow 
of  any  quality  is  to  be  disposed,  or  in  what  proportion  it  is  to 
be  laid.  Yet  more,  it  is  essential  that  his  eye  should  not  be 
satisfied,  nor  his  work  facilitated,  by  the  more  or  less  pleasant 
qualities  of  shade  in  chalk  or  charcoal : he  should  be  at  once 
compelled  to  practise  in  the  media  with  which  he  must  ulti- 
mately produce  the  true  effects  of  light  and  shade  in  the 
noblest  painting, — media  admitting  no  tricks  of  texture,  lustre, 
or  transparency.  Even  sepia  is  open  to  some  temptation  of 
this  kind,  and  is  to  be  therefore  reserved  for  the  days  when 
the  young  workman  may  pretend  to  copy  Turner  or  Holbein. 
For  the  beginner,  pure  and  plain  lampblack  is  the  safest,  aa 
the  most  sincere,  of  materials. 

It  has  the  farther  advantage  of  being  extremely  difficult  to 


LIGHT  AND  SHADE. 


121 


manage  in  a wasli ; so  that,  practising  first  in  this  medium, 
you  will  have  no  difficulty  with  more  tractable  colors. 

13.  In  order  not  to  waste  paper,  color,  nor  time,  you  must 
be  deliberate  and  neat  in  all  proceedings : and  above  all,  you 
must  have  good  paper  and  good  pencils.  Three  of  properly 
varied  size  are  supplied  in  your  box  ; to  these  you  must  add 
a commoner  one  of  the  size  of  the  largest,  which  you  are  to 
keep  separate,  merely  for  mixing  and  supplying  color. 

Take  a piece  of  thick  and  smooth  paper  ; and  outline  on  it 
accurately  a space  ten  inches  high  by  five  wide,  and,  cutting 
it  off  so  as  to  leave  some  half  inch  of  margin  all  round,  arrange 
it,  the  narrow  side  up,  on  a book  or  desk  sloping  at  an  angle 
of  not  less,  nor  much  more,  than  25°. 

Put  two  small  teacup-saucers  ; and  your  two  pencils — one 
for  supply,  and  one  to  draw  with  ; a glass  of  water,  your  ivory 
palette-knife,  and  a teaspoon,  comfortably  beside  you,  and 
don’t  have  any  thing  else  on  the  table. 

Being  forced  to  content  ourselves  for  the  present,  with  tube 
colors,  I must  ask  you  to  be  very  careful  and  neat  in  their  use. 
The  aperture,  in  tubes  of  the  size  you  are  supplied  with,  is 
about  the  eighth  of  an  inch  wide,  and  with  the  slightest  press- 
ure (to  be  applied,  remember,  always  at  the  bottom  of  the  tube, 
not  the  sides),  you  will  push  out  a little  boss  or  round  tower 
of  color,  which  ought  not  to  be  more  than  the  eighth  of  an 
inch,  or  its  own  width,  above  the  top  of  the  tube.  Do  not 
rub  this  on  the  saucer,  but  take  it  neatly  off  with  the  edge  of 
your  knife,  and  so  put  it  in  the  saucer ; and  screw  the  top  of 
your  tube  nicely  on  again,  and  put  it  back  in  its  place. 

Now  put  two  spoonfuls  of  water  into  one  saucer,  and  stir 
the  color  well  into  it  with  your  supply  pencil.  Then  put  the 
same  quantity  of  pure  water  into  the  other  saucer,  and  you 
are  ready  to  begin. 

14.  Take  first  a pencilful  of  quite  pure  water,  and  lead  it 
along  the  top  of  your  five-inch  space,  leaving  a little  ridge  of 
of  wrater  all  the  way.  Then,  from  your  supply  saucer,  put  a 
pencilful  of  the  mixed  color  into  the  pure  water ; stir  that 
up  well  with  your  pencil,  and  lead  the  ridge  of  pure  water 
down  with  that  delicatest  tint,  about  half  an  inch,  leaving  an- 


122 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


other  ridge  all  along.  Then  another  pencilful  from  the 
supply  saucer  into  the  other,  mixed  always  thoroughly  for 
the  next  half  inch.  Do  not  put  the  supply  pencil  into  the 
diluted  tint,  but  empty  it  by  pressing  on  the  side  of  the  sau- 
cer, so  that  you  may  not  dilute  the  supply  tint,  which  you  are 
to  keep,  through  the  course  of  each  wash,  quite  evenly  mixed. 
With  twenty,  or  one  or  two  less  than  twenty,  replenisliings, 
and  therefore  darkenings,  of  the  tint  you  are  painting  with, 
you  will  reach  the  bottom  of  the  ten-inch  space ; which 
ought  then  already  to  present  a quite  visible  gradation  from 
white  to  a very  pale  gray. 

15.  Leaving  this  to  dry  thoroughly,  pour  the  diluted 
tint  you  have  been  painting  with  away  ; wash  out  the  saucer  ; 
put  in  another  supply  of  clear  water  ; and  you  are  ready  to 
lay  the  second  coat.  The  process  being  entirely  mechanical, 
you  can  read,  or  do  anything  else  you  like,  while  the  suc- 
cessive coats  are  drying  ; and  each  will  take  longer  than  the 
last.  But  don’t  go  on  with  other  drawings,  unless  indeed  you 
like  to  tint  two  pieces  of  paper  at  once,  and  so  waste  less  color 
— using  the  diluted  tint  of  the  first  for  the  supply  of  tint 
of  the  second,  and  so  gaining  a still  more  delicate  gradation. 
And  whether  you  do  this  or  not,  at  every  third  coat  pour  the 
diluted  tint  back  into  the  supply  one,  which  will  else  be  too 
soon  exhausted.  By  the  time  you  have  laid  on  ten  or  twelve 
tints,  you  will  begin  to  see  such  faults  and  unevenness  as  may 
at  first  be  inevitable  ; but  also  you  will  begin  to  feel  what  is 
meant  by  gradation,  and  to  what  extent  the  delicacy  of  it 
may  be  carried.  Proceed  with  the  work,  however,  until  the 
color  is  so  far  diluted  as  to  be  ineffective  ; and  do  not  rest 
satisfied  till  you  are  familiar  enough  with  this  process  to 
secure  a gradated  tint  of  even  and  pleasant  tone.  As  you  feel 
more  command  of  the  pencil,  you  may  use  less  water  with  the 
color,  and  at  last  get  your  result  in  three  or  four  instead  of 
twenty  washes. 

16.  Next,  divide  the  entire  space  into  two  equal  squares, 
by  a delicate  lead  line  across  it,  placing  it  upright  in  the  same 
manner  ; and  begin  your  gradation  with  the  same  care,  but 
replenishing  the  tint  in  the  pure  water  from  the  dark  fint  in 


OF  LIGHT  AND  SHADE. 


123 


as  narrow  spaces  as  you  can,  till  you  get  down  the  uppermost 
square.  As  soon  as  you  pass  the  dividing  line  between  the 
two  squares,  continue  with  the  same  tint,  without  darkening 
it,  to  the  bottom,  so  that  the  lower  square  may  be  all  of  one 
tone.  Kepeating  this  operation  three  or  four  times,  you  will 
have  the  entire  space  divided  into  two  equal  portions,  of 
which  the  upper  one  will  be  gradated  from  white  into  a deli- 
cate gray,  and  the  lower  covered  with  a consistent  shade  of 
that  gray  in  its  ultimate  strength.  This  is  to  be  your  stand- 
ard for  the  first  shading  of  all  white  objects  ; their  dark  sides 
being  of  an  uniform  tint  of  delicate  gray,  and  their  light  sides 
modelled  in  tones  which  are  always  paler  in  comparison  with  it. 

17.  Having  practised  in  this  cautious  manner  long  enough 
to  obtain  some  ease  in  distribution  of  the  tint,  and  some  feel- 
ing of  the  delicacy  of  a true  gradation,  you  may  proceed  to 
the  more  difficult,  but  wonderfully  useful  and  comprehensive 
exercise,  necessary  for  the  copying  of  Plate  X. 

Draw  first,  with  pencil-compasses,  the  two  circles  with 
inch  radius,  and  in  the  lower  one  trace  lightly  the  limit  of  its 
crescent  of  shade,  on  the  22nd  meridian,  considering  the  verti- 
cal meridian  that  of  Fesole.  Then  mix  your  tint  of  black  with 
two  teaspoonfuls  of  water,  very  thoroughly,  and  with  that  tint 
wash  in  at  once  the  whole  background  and  shaded  spaces. 
You  need  not  care  for  precision  on  their  inner  edges,  but  the 
tint  must  be  exactly  brought  up  to  the  circumference  of  the 
circles  on  their  light  sides. 

18.  After  the  tint  is  thoroughly  dry,  begin  with  the  circle 
divided  in  half,  and  taking  a very  little  pure  water  to  begin 
with,  and  adding,  with  a fine  pencil,  a little  of  the  dark  tint 
as  you  work  down,  (putting  the  light  part  upwards  on  your 
desk),  gradate,  as  you  best  can,  to  the  shadow  edge,  over 
which  you  are  to  carry  whatever  tint  you  have  then  in  your 
pencil,  flat  and  unchanged,  to  the  other  side  of  the  circle, 
darkening  equally  the  entire  dark  side. 

In  the  lower  circle,  the  point  of  highest  light  is  at  the  equa- 
tor on  the  4th  meridian.  The  two  balls  therefore,  as  shaded 
in  the  plate,  represent  two  views  of  the  revolving  earth,  with 
the  sun  over  the  equator.  The  lower  figure  gives  what  is 


124 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


also  the  light  and  shade  of  the  moon  in  her  third  quarter.  I 
do  not  choose  to  represent  the  part  of  the  earth  under  the 
night  as  black : the  student  may  suppose  it  to  be  in  full 
moonlight  if  he  likes  ; but  the  use  of  the  figure  is  mainly  to 
show  the  real,  and  narrow,  extent  of  resources  at  his  disposal, 
in  a light  and  shadow  drawing  executed  without  acccidental 
reflected  lights,  and  under  no  vulgar  force  of  shadow.  With 
no  greater  depths  of  tint  than  those  here  given,  he  must  hold 
it  his  skill  to  render  every  character  of  contour  in  beautiful 
forms ; and  teach  himself  to  be  more  interested  in  them,  as 
displayed  by  that  primal  sincerity  of  light,  than  when  seen 
under  any  accidental  effects,  or  violent  contrasts. 

19.  The  tint  prepared  with  two  teaspoonfuls  of  water, 
though  quite  as  dark  as  the  student  will  be  able  at  first  to 
manage,  (or  as  any  master  can  manage  in  complex  masses,) 
will  not,  when  dry,  give  shadow  more  than  half  the  depth  of 
that  used  for  the  background  in  the  plate.  It  must  there- 
fore be  twice  laid  ; the  skill  of  the  pencil  management  will  be 
tested  by  the  consistency  of  the  two  outlines.  At  the  best, 
they  are  sure  to  need  a little  retouching ; and  where  accu- 
rately coincident,  their  line  will  be  hard,  and  never  so  pleas- 
ant as  that  left  at  the  edge  of  a first  wash.  I wish  the  student 
especially  to  notice  this,  for  in  actual  drawing,  it  is  a matter 
of  absolute  necessity  never  to  reduplicate  a wash  at  the  same 
edge.  All  beautiful  execution  depends  on  giving  the  outline 
truly  with  the  first  tint  laid  as  dark  as  it  is  required.  This  is 
always  possible  with  well-prepared  colors  in  a master’s 
hand ; yet  never  without  so  much  haste  as  must,  unless  the 
mastery  be  indeed  consummate,  leave  something  to  be  for- 
given, of  inaccuracy,  or  something  to  be  grateful  for,  in  the 
rewarding  chance  which  always  favors  a rightness  in  method. 
The  most  distinctive  charm  of  water-color,  as  opposed  to  oil, 
is  in  the  visible  merit  of  this  hasty  skill,  and  the  entertaining 
concurrence  of  accidental  felicity.  In  the  more  deliberate  lay- 
ing of  oil-color,  though  Fortune  always  takes  her  due  share, 
it  is  not  recognizable  by  the  spectator,  and  is  held  to  the  ut- 
most in  control  by  the  resolution  of  the  workman,  when  hia 
mind  is  wise,  and  his  piece  complete. 


OF  LIGHT  AND  SHADE. 


125 


20.  But  the  student  must  not  be  discouraged  by  the  diffi- 
culty he  will  find  at  first  in  reaching  anything  like  evenness 
or  serenity  of  effect  in  such  studies.  Neither  these,  nor  any 
other  of  the  exercises  in  this  book,  are  c elementary,’  in  the 
sense  of  easy  or  initial ; but  a*s  involving  the  first  elements  of 
all  graphic  Law.  And  this  first  study  of  light  and  shade  in 
Plate  X.  does  indeed  involve  one  law  of  quite  final  impor- 
tance ; but  which  may  nevertheless  be  simply  expressed,  as 
most  essential  matters  may  be,  by  people  who  wish  it. 

< 



— * 

<— * 



4— — 

21.  The  gradation  which  you  have  produced  on  your  first 
ten-inch  space  is,  if  successful,  consistent  in  its  increase  of 
depth,  from  top  to  bottom.  But  you  may  see  that  in  Plate 
X.  the  light  is  diffused  widely  and  brightly  round  the  foci, 
and  fades  with  accelerated  diminution  towards  the  limit  of 
darkness.  By  examining  the  law  under  which  this  decrease 
of  light  takes  place  on  a spherical  (or  cylindrical  *)  surface, 
we  may  deduce  a general  law,  regulating  the  light  in  impact 
on  any  curved  surface  whatever. 

In  all  analysis  of  curved  lines  it  is  necessary  first  to  regard 
them  as  made  up  of  a series  of  right  lines,  afterwards  consid- 
ering these  right  lines  as  infinitely  short. 

* In  the  upper  figure,  the  actual  gradation  is  the  same  as  that  which 
would  be  true  for  a cylinder. 


P 


126 


THE  LAWS  OF  FE80LE. 


22.  Let  therefore  the  line  a b,  Figure  31,  represent  any 
plane  surface,  or  an  infinitely  small  portion  of  any  curved 
surface,  on  which  the  light,  coming  in  the  direction  of  the 
arrows,  strikes  at  a given  angle  bac. 

Draw  from  b,  bp  perpendicular  to  a c,  and  make  b p equal 
to  A B. 

Then  the  quantity  of  light,  or  number  of  rays  of  light,  sup- 
posing each  arrow  to  represent  a ray,  which  the  so  inclined 
surface  a b can  receive,  is  to  the  quantity  it  could  receive  if  it 
were  perpendicular  to  the  light,  (at  p b,)  as  the  line  b c is  to 

the  line  p b,  which  is 
equal  to  the  line  ab. 

Therefore  if  we  di- 
vide the  line  a b,  from 
a to  b,  into  any  num- 
ber of  degrees,  repre- 
senting the  gradual 
y diminution  of  light, 
uniformly,  from  any 
given  maximum  at  a 
to  any  given  mini* 
mum  at  b,  and  draw 
the  circle  c t with  the 
radius  b c,  cutting  a 
b in  t,  the  point  t,  on 
the  scale  of  shade  so 
gradated,  will  mark  the  proper  tint  of  shade  for  the  entire 
surface  a b. 

This  general  law,  therefore,  determines  the  tint  of  shade,  in 
any  given  scale  of  shade,  for  the  point  of  any  curved  surface 
to  which  the  line  a b is  a tangent. 

23.  Applying  this  general  law  to  the  light  and  shade  of  a 
sphere,  let  the  light,  coming  in  the  direction  l v,  Figure  32, 
strike  the  surface  of  the  quadrant  pa  at  the  point  v,  to  which 
the  line  x y is  a tangent,  b being  the  centre  of  the  sphere* 
join  b v,  and  from  a draw  a c parallel  to  x y,  and  therefore 
perpendicular  to  b v.  Produce  l v to  m,  and  draw  the  arc  of 
circle  c t,  cutting  a b in  t. 


x 


OF  LIGHT  AFD  SHADE. 


127 


Then,  by  the  law  last  enunciated,  if  we  divide  the  line  a b 
uniformly  into  any  number  of  degrees  of  shade  from  the 
maximum  of  light  at  a to  its  minimum  at  b,  the  point  t will 
indicate,  on  that  scale,  the  proper  shade  for  the  point  of 
sphere-surface,  v.  And  because  b v equals  b a,  and  the  angle 
b v m equals  the  angle  a b c,  . \ m v equals  b t ; and  the  degree 
of  shade  may  at  once  be  indicated  for  any  point  on  the  surface 
a p by  letting  fall  a vertical  from  it  on  the  uniformly  gradated 
scale  a b. 

24.  Dividing  that  scale  into  ninety  degrees  from  A to  B, 
we  find  that,  on  the  globe,  when  the  sun  is  over  the  equator, 
the  Christian  circle,  though  in  60  degrees  north  latitude,  re- 
ceives yet  45  degrees  of  light,  or  half  the  quantity  of  the 
equatorial  light,  and  that,  approximately,*  the  losses  of  the 
strength  of  light  in  the  climates  of  the  five  circles  are,™ 


St  James’s, 

Arabian, 

Venetian, 

Christian, 

Fern, 


3 degrees  loss,  leaving  87  of  light 
12  degrees  loss,  leaving  78  of  light. 
26  degrees  loss,  leaving  64  of  light 
45  degrees  loss,  leaving  45  of  light 
67  degrees  loss,  leaving  23  of  light 


But  it  is  always  to  be  remembered  that  in  the  real  passing 
of  day  into  night,  the  transition  from  the  final  degree  of 
shadow  on  the  gradated  curvature  of  the  illuminated  hemi- 
sphere, to  night  itself,  is  a much  greater  one  than  it  is  our 
power  to  express  by  any  scale  : so  that  our  90  measured  de- 
grees do  not  carry  us  even  into  twilight,  but  only  to  the  point 
and  moment  of  sunset.  They  express,  however,  with  approxi- 
mate accuracy,  the  relation  of  the  terrestrial  climate  so  far  as 
it  depends  on  solar  influences  only,  and  the  consequently 
relative  power  of  light  on  vegetation  and  animal  life,  taking 
the  single  numerical  expression  as  a mean  for  the  balanced 
effect  of  summer  and  winter,  j 


* Calculated  to  two  places  of  decimals  by  Mr.  Macdonald,  the  Master 
of  my  Oxford  schools,  the  fractional  values  are  3.07,  12.06,  26.36,  and 

66.71,  giving  the  regulated  diminishing  intervals  8.99,  4.30,  18.64, 

21.71,  and  23.29,  or,  roughly,  9,  14,  18,  21,  23. 

f The  difference  in  effective  heat  between  rays  falling  at  large  os 


128 


TEE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


25.  Without  encumbering  himself,  in  practice,  by  any  at- 
tempts to  apply  this,  or  any  similar  geometric  formulae,  during 
the  progress  of  his  work,  (in  which  the  eye,  memory,  and 
imagination  are  to  be  his  first,  and  final,  instruments,)  the 
student  is  yet  to  test  his  results  severely  by  the  absolute 
decrees  of  natural  law  ; and  however  these  may  be  prudently 
relaxed  in  compliance  with  the  narrowness  of  his  means,  or 
concession  to  the  feebleness  of  his  powers,  he  is  always  to  re- 
member that  there  is  indeed  a right,  and  a wrong,  attendant 
on  the  purpose  and  act  of  every  touch,  firm  as  the  pillars  of 
the  earth,  measured  as  the  flight  of  its  hours,  and  lovely  as  the 
moral  law,  from  which  one  jot  or  tittle  shall  not  pass,  till  all 
be  fulfilled. 

26.  Together  with  these  delicate  exercises  in  neutral  tint, 
the  student  cannot  too  early  begin  practice  in  laying  frank 
and  full  touches  of  every  zodiacal  color,  within  stated  limits. 
He  may  advisably  first  provide  himself  with  examples  of  the 
effects  of  opposition  in  color,  by  drawing  the  square  of  the 
Fern  line,  measured  on  his  twelve-inch  globe,  within  the 
square  of  the  Venetian  line  ; then  filling  the  interior  square 
with  any  one  of  the  zodiacal  colors,  and  the  enclosing  space 
between  it  and  the  larger  square,  with  the  opponent  color  : 
trying  also  the  effect  of  opposition  between  dark  tints  of  one 
color  and  light  tints  of  the  other  : each  wash  to  be  laid  on  at 
once,  and  resolutely  left  without  retouching.  The  student 
will  thus  gradually  gain  considerable  power  of  manipulating 
the  pencil,  with  full  color  ; recognize  more  clearly  day  by 
day  how  much  he  has  to  gain ; and  arrive  at  many  interesting 
conclusions  as  to  the  value  and  reciprocal  power  of  opposed 
hues. 

27.  All  these  exercises  must,  however,  be  kept  in  subordi- 
nation to  earnest  and  uninterrupted  practice  with  the  pen- 
point  or  the  lead  ; of  which  I give  two  more  examples  in  the 
present  number  of  Fesole,  which,  with  those  already  set  before 
the  student,  Plates  V.,  VI.,  and  VIII.,  will  form  a quite  suffi- 

small  angles,  cannot  be  introduced  in  this  first  step  of  analysis:  still  less 
is  it  necessary  to  embarrass  the  young  student  by  any  attempt  to  gen- 
eralize the  courses  of  the  isothermal  lines. 


1 

Study  with  the  Lead  and  Single  Tint.  Leaf  of  Herb. — Robert. 

Schools  of  St.  George.  Elementary  Drawing,  Plate  XI. 


OF  LIGHT  AND  SHADE . 


129 


cient  code  for  liis  guidance  until  I can  begin  the  second 
volume.* 

28.  Plate  XI.  represents,  as  far  as  mezzotint  easily  can,  a 
drawing  of  the  plan  and  profile  of  a leaf  of  wild  geranium, 
made  lightly  with  the  lead,  and  secured  by  a single  washed 
tint  above  it. 

Every  care  is  to  be  given  in  study  of  this  kind  to  get  the 
outline  as  right  and  as  refined  as  possible.  Both  shade  and 
color  are  to  be  held  entirely  subordinate  ; yet  shade  is  to  be 
easily  and  swiftly  added,  in  its  proper  place,  and  any  peculiar 
local  color  may  be  indicated,  by  way  of  memorandum,  in  the 
guarding  tint,  without  attempting  the  effect  of  a colored 
drawing.  Neither  is  any  finish  or  depth  to  be  sought  in  the 
shade.  It  should  rightly  indicate  the  surges  or  troughs  of  the 
leaf,  and  the  course  and  projection  of  large  ribs,  (when  the 
plan  drawing  is  made  of  the  under  surface,)  but  it  must  not 
be  laboriously  completed  or  pursued.  No  study  of  this  kind 
should  ever  take  more  than  an  hour  for  plan  and  profile  both  : 
but  the  outline  should  be  accurate  to  the  utmost  of  the  stu- 
dent’s power,  and  as  delicate  as  the  lead  will  draw. 

29.  Although,  in  beginning,  precise  measurements  are  to 
be  taken  of  the  leafs  length  and  breadth,  yet  the  mistakes  in- 
evitable during  execution  cannot  be  easily  corrected  without 
some  variation  in  the  size  ; it  is  far  better  to  lose  the  exact 
measurement  than  the  feeling  of  the  form.  Thus  my  profile 
is  nearly  a quarter  of  an  inch  too  long  for  the  plan,  because  I 
could  not  get  the  spring  of  it  to  my  mind  in  its  first  propor- 
tion. The  plan  may  generally  be  kept  to  its  true  scale  ; and 
at  all  events  the  measures  should  be  marked  for  reference 
within  their  proper  geometrical  limits,  as  in  the  upper  outline, 
of  which  I have  more  to  say  in  another  place. 

30.  Plate  XII.  gives  example  of  an  equally  rapid  mode  of 
study  when  the  object  is  essentially  light  and  shade.  Here  the 
ground  is  a deeply  toned  gray  paper  ; the  outline  is  made  with 
stern  decision,  but  without  care  for  subtlety  in  minor  points  ; 
some  gradations  of  shade  are  rapidly  added  with  the  lead, — 

* During  the  spring  I must  confine  my  work  wholly  to  Proserpina. 

9 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


180 

(BB)  ; and  finally,  the  high  lights,  laid  on  with  extreme  care 
with  body-white.  Theoretically,  the  outline,  in  such  a study 
as  this,  should  always  be  done  first : but  practically,  I find  it 
needful,  with  such  imperfect  skill  as  I have,  to  . scrabble  in  the 
pencil  shadows  for  some  guide  to  the  places  of  the  lights  ; 
and  then  fasten  everything  down  firmly  with  the  pen  outline. 
Then  I complete  the  shadow  as  far  as  needful  ; clear  the 
lights  with  bread  first;  and  then,  which  is  the  gist  of  the 
whole,  lay  the  high  lights  with  carefullest  discipline  of  their 
relations. 

Mr.  Allen’s  very  skilful  mezzotint  ground  is  more  tender 
and  united  than  the  pencil  shadow  was,  in  this  case  ; or  usually 
need  be  : but  the  more  soft  it  is  the  better  ; only  let  no  time 
be  lost  upon  it. 

31.  Plate  YIII.,  given  in  the  last  number  of  Fesole,  for  illus- 
tration of  other  matters,  represents  also  the  complete  methods 
of  wholesome  study  with  the  pen  and  sepia,  for  advanced  ren- 
dering both  of  form  and  chiaroscuro. 

Perfect  form  never  can  be  given  but  with  color  (see  above, 
Chapter  YIII.  § 22).  But  the  foundational  elements  of  it 
may  be  given  in  a very  impressive  and  useful  way  by  the  pen, 
with  any  washed  tint.  In  the  upper  study  the  pen  only  is 
used ; and  when  the  forms  are  conrplete,  no  more  should  be 
attempted ; for  none  but  a great  master  can  rapidly  secure 
fine  form  with  a tint.  But  with  the  pen,  thus  used,  much 
may  be  reached  by  the  student  in  very  early  stages  of  his  prog- 
ress. 

32.  Observe  that  in  work  of  this  kind,  you  are  not  to  be 
careful  about  the  direction  or  separation  of  the  lines  ; but,  on 
the  other  hand,  you  are  not  to  slur,  scrabble,  or  endeavor  to 
reach  the  mysterious  qualities  of  an  etching.  Use  an  ordina- 
rily fine  pen-point,  well  kept  down  ; and  let  the  gradations  be 
got  by  the  nearness  or  separation,  singleness  or  crossing  of 
the  lines,  but  not  by  any  faintness  in  them. 

But  if  the  forms  be  simple,  and  there  be  a variety  of  local 
colors  which  is  important  in  the  subject, — as,  in  the  lower 
study,  the  paleness  of  the  stamens  of  the  pink  in  relation  to 
its  petals, — use  the  pen  only  for  fine  outline,  as  in  Plate  XII.; 


Light  and  Shade  with  Refusal  of  Color. 

Scarlet  Geranium. 


Petal-yault  of 


Schools  of  St.  George.  Elementary  Drawing,  Plate  XII. 


OF  LIGHT  AND  SHADE. 


131 


and  when  that  is  perfectly  dry,  complete  the  light  and  shade 
with  as  few  washes  as  possible. 

33.  It  is  also  to  be  noted  that  a dark  background  is  admis- 
sible only,  in  chiaroscuro  study,  when  you  intend  to  refuse  all 
expression  of  colour,  and  to  consider  the  object  as  if  it  were  a 
piece  of  sculpture  in  white  marble.  To  illustrate  this  point 
more  strongly,  I have  chosen  for  the  chiaroscuro  plate,  XII. , 
a cluster  of  scarlet  geranium  ; in  which  the  abstraction  of  the 
form  from  the  color  brings  out  conditions  of  grace  and  bal- 
ance in  the  blossom  which  the  force  of  the  natural  color  dis- 
guised. On  the  other  hand,  when  the  rich  crimson  of  the 
Clarissa  flower  (Plate  VIII.)  is  to  be  shown  in  opposition  to 
the  paler  green  of  its  stamens,  I leave  the  background  pure 
white.  The  upper  figure  in  the  same  plate  being  studied  for 
form  only,  admits  any  darkness  of  background  which  may  re- 
lieve the  contour  on  the  light  side. 

34.  The  method  of  study  which  refuses  local  color,  partly 
by  the  apparent  dignity  and  science  of  it,  and  partly  by  the 
feverish  brilliancy  of  effect  induced,  in  engraving,  by  leaving 
ail  the  lights  white,  became  the  preferred  method  of  the 
schools  of  the  Renaissance,  headed  by  Leonardo  : and  it  was 
both  familiarized  and  perpetuated  by  the  engravings  of  Durer 
and  Marc  Antonio.  It  has  been  extremely  mischievous  in  this 
supremacy  ; but  the  technical  mischief  of  it  is  so  involved 
with  moral  faults  proceeding  from  far  other  causes,  that  I must 
not  here  attempt  its  analysis.  Every  student  ought,  however, 
to  understand,  and  sometimes  to  use,  the  method  ; but  all 
main  work  is  to  be  with  the  severest  respect  to  local  color, 
and  with  pure  white  background. 

35.  Note  yet  once  more.  Although  for  facility  of  work, 
wdien  form  alone  is  needed,  the  direction  of  the  pen-stroke  is 
to  be  disregarded,  yet,  if  texture,  or  any  organic  character  in 
the  surface  of  the  object,  be  manifest,  the  direction  or  manner 
of  breaking,  in  the  pen  touch,  may  pleasantly  comply  with 
such  character,  and  suggest  it.  The  plate  of  Contorta  Pur- 
purea (VII.  in  “ Proserpina”)  is  thus  engraved  with  the  double 
intention  of  expressing  the  color  of  the  flower  and  the  texture 
of  the  leaf,  and  may  serve  for  enough  example  in  this  particu- 


132 


THE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


lar  ; but  it  is  always  to  be  remembered  that  such  expedients 
are  only  partial  and  suggestive,  and  that  they  must  never  be 
allowed  to  waste  time,  or  distract  attention.  Perfect  rendering 
of  surface  can  only  be  given  by  perfect  painting,  and  in  all 
elementary  work  the  student  should  hold  himself  well  disen- 
gaged from  serfdom  to  a particular  method.  As  long  as  he 
can  get  more  truths  in  a given  time,  by  letting  his  pen-point 
move  one  way  rather  than  another,  he  should  let  it  easily 
comply  with  the  natural  facts, — but  let  him  first  be  quite 
sure  he  sees  the  facts  to  be  complied  with.  It  is  proper  to 
follow  the  striae  of  an  ophrys  leaf  with  longitudinal  touches, 
but  not,  as  vulgar  engravers,  to  shade  a pearl  with  concentric 
circles. 

36.  Note,  finally,  that  the  degree  of  subtlety  in  observation 
and  refinement  of  line  which  the  student  gives  to  these  incipi- 
ent drawings  must  be  regulated  in  great  degree  by  his  own 
sense  and  feeling,  with  due  relation  to  the  natural  power  of 
his  sight : and  that  his  discretion  and  self-command  are  to  be 
showm  not  more  in  the  perseverance  of  bestowing  labor  to 
profit,  than  in  the  vigilance  for  the  instant  when  it  should 
cease,  and  obedience  to  the  signals  for  its  cessation.  The  in- 
creasing powrer  of  finish  is  always  a sign  of  progress  ; but  the 
most  zealous  student  must  often  be  content  to  do  little  ; and 
the  greatest  observe  the  instant  when  he  can  do  no  more. 

37.  The  careless  and  insolent  manners  of  modern  art  study, 
(for  the  most  part,)  forbid  me  the  dread  of  over-insistance  on 
minutiae  of  practice  ; but  I have  not,  for  such  reason,  added 
to  the  difficulty  or  delicacy  of  the  exercises  given.  On  the 
contrary,  they  are  kept,  by  consistent  attention,  within  the 
easy  reach  of  healthy  youthful  hand  and  sight ; and  they  are 
definitely  representative  of  what  should  properly  be  done  in 
drawings , as  distinguised  from  the  qualities  attainable  by  the 
consummate  line  engraver.  As  an  example  of  wdiat,  in  that 
more  subtle  kind,  the  human  eye  and  finger  can  accomplish 
by  severe  industry,  every  town  library  ought  to  possess,  and 
make  conveniently  accessible  to  its  students,  the  great  botani- 
cal series  of  the  Florae  Danicae.  The  drawings  for  the  num- 
bers produced  before  the  year  1820  were  in  better  taste,  and 


OF  LIGHT  AND  SHADE.  * 


133 


the  engravings  more  exemplary  in  manner,  than  in  the  sup* 
plementary  numbers  lately  in  course  of  publication  : but  the 
resolute  and  simple  effort  for  excellence  is  unfailing  through- 
out ; and  for  precision  and  patience  of  execution,  the  nine 
plates,  2744  to  2753,  may  be  safely  taken  as  monumental  of 
the  honor,  grace,  and,  in  the  most  solemn  sense,  majesty,  of 
simple  human  work,*  maintained  amidst  and  against  all  the 
bribes,  follies,  and  lasciviousness  of  the  nineteenth  century. 

38.  Together  with  these,  and  other  such  worthily  exe- 
cuted illustrations  of  natural  history,  every  public  institution 
should  possess  several  copies  of  the  * Tresor  Artistique  de  la 
France/  now  publishing  in  Paris.  It  contains  representations, 
which  no  mechanical  art  can  be  conceived  ever  likely  to 
excel,  of  some  of  the  best  ornamental  designs  existing  ; with 
others,  (I  regret  to  observe,  as  yet,  much  the  plurality,)  of 
Renaissance  jewellery,  by  which  the  foulness  and  dulness  of 
the  most  reputed  masters  of  that  epoch  are  illustrated  with  a 
force  which  has  not  hitherto  been  possible.  The  plates,  which 
represent  design  of  the  greater  ages,  more  especially  those  of 
the  Boite  d’Evangeliaire  of  St.  Denis,  which  the  brooch  and 
cassette  of  St.  Louis,  had  better  be  purchased  by  those  of  my 
students  who  can  afford  the  cost ; and  with  these,  also,  the 
uncolored  plates  of  the  Coffret  i\  Bijoux  of  Anne  of  Austria, 
which  is  exemplary  of  the  best  Renaissance  wreathen  work. 
The  other  pieces  of  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  century  toys, 
given  in  this  publication,  are  all  of  them  leading  examples  ot 
the  essential  character  of  Renaissance  art, — the  pride  of  Thieves, 
adorned  by  the  industry  of  Fools,  under  the  mastership  of 
Satyrs.  As  accurately  representative  of  these  mixtures  of  betise 
with  abomination,  the  platter  and  ewer  executed  in  Germany, 
as  an  offering  to  the  Emperor  Charles  V.  on  his  victory  at  Tunis, 
are  of  very  notable  value  : but  a more  terrific  lesson  may  be 
read  in  the  ghastly  and  senseless  Gorgons  of  the  armor  of 
Henry  H.,  if  the  student  of  history  remember,  in  relation  to 

* With  truly  noble  pride,  neither  the  draughtsman  nor  the  engraver 
have  set  their  names  to  the  plates.  “ We  are  Men,”  they  say,  “with 
the  hearts  and  hands  of  Men.  That  is  all  you  need  know.  Our  names 
are  nothing  to  you.” 


134 


TEE  LAWS  OF  FESOLE. 


them,  the  entertainment  with  which  he  graced  his  Queen’s 
coronation  ; and  the  circumstances  of  his  own  death. 

39.  The  relations  between  the  rich  and  poor,  on  which  the 
pomp  of  this  Kenaissance  art  was  founded,  may  be  sufficiently 
illustrated  by  two  short  passages,  almost  consecutive,  in 
‘ Evelyn’s  Diary  ’ : 

“ 11  May  (1651). — To  the  Palace  Cardinal,  where  ye  Mr.  of 
Ceremonies  plac’d  me  to  see  y6  royal  masque  or  opera.  The 
first  sceane  represented  a chariot  of  singers  compos’d  of  the 
rarest  voices  that  could  be  procur’d,  representing  Cornaro 
and  Temperance  ; this  was  overthrowne  by  Bacchus  and  his 
Kevellers  ; the  rest  consisted  of  several  enteries  and  pageants 
of  excesse,  by  all  the  Elements.  A masque  representing  fire 
was  admirable ; then  came  a Yenus  out  of  ye  clouds.  The 
conclusion  was  an  heaven,  whither  all  ascended.  But  the 
glory  of  the  masque  was  the  greate  persons  performing  in  it : 
the  French  King,  his  brother  the  Duke  of  Anjou,  with  all  the 
grandees  of  the  Court,  the  King  performing  to  the  admiration 
of  all.  The  music  was  29  violins,  vested  d Vantiq,  but  the 
habits  of  the  masquers  were  stupendiously  rich  and  glorious. 

* * * * * * * 

“29  January. — I sat  out  in  a coach  for  Calais,  in  an  exceed- 
ing hard  frost,  which  had  continued  some  time.  We  got  that 
night  to  Beaumont ; 30,  to  Beauvais  ; 31,  we  found  the  ways 
very  deepe  wth  snow,  and  it  was  exceeding  cold ; din’d  at 
Pois  ; lay  at  Pernee,  a miserable  cottage  of  miserable  people 
in  a wood,  wholly  unfurnished,  but  in  a little  time  we  had 
sorry  beds  and  some  provision,  wch  they  told  me,  they  hid  in 
ye  wood  for  feare  of  the  frontier  enemy,  the  garisons  neere 
them  continually  plundering  what  they  had.  They  were  often 
infested  with  wolves.  I cannot  remember  that  I ever  saw  more 
miserable  creatures.” 

40.  It  is  not,  I believe,  without  the  concurrence  of  the 
noblest  Fors,  that  I have  been  compelled,  in  my  reference  to 
this  important  French  series  of  illustrative  art,  to  lead  the 
student’s  attention  forward  into  some  of  the  higher  subjects 
of  reflection,  which  for  the  most  part  I reserve  for  the  closing 


OF  LIGHT  AND  SHADE. 


135 


volume  of  the  Laws  of  Fesole.  Counting  less  than  most  men, 
what  future  days  may  bring  or  deny  to  me,  I am  thankful  to 
be  permitted,  in  the  beginning  of  a New  Year  of  which  I once 
little  thought  to  see  the  light,  to  repeat,  with  all  the  force  of 
which  my  mind  is  yet  capable,  the  lesson  I have  endeavored 
to  teach  through  my  past  life,  that  this  fair  Tree  Igdrasil  of 
Human  Art  can  only  flourish  when  its  dew  is  Affection  ; its 
air,  Devotion ; the  rock  of  its  roots,  Patience ; and  its  sub* 
shine,  God. 


/ 


’ 


:! 

■ 


A JOY  FOREVER 

(AND  ITS  PRICE  IN  THE  MARKET)  BEING  THE  SUBSTANCE 
(WITH  ADDITIONS)  OF  TWO  LECTURES  ON  THE  POLITI- 
CAL ECONOMY  OF  ART,  DELIVERED  AT  MAN- 
CHESTER, JULY  ioth  and  13th,  1857. 


PREFACE. 


The  title  of  this  book, — or,  more  accurately,  of  its  subjects  , 
—for  no  author  was  ever  less  likely  than  I have  lately  become, 
to  hope  for  perennial  pleasure  to  his  readers  from  what  has 
cost  himself  the  most  pains, — will  be,  perhaps,  recognised  by 
some  as  the  last  clause  of  the  line  chosen  from  Keats  by  the 
good  folks  of  Manchester,  to  be  written  in  letters  of  gold  on 
the  cornice,  or  Holy  rood,  of  the  great  Exhibition  which  in- 
augurated the  career  of  so  many, — since  organized,  by  both 
foreign  governments  and  our  own,  to  encourage  the  produc- 
tion of  works  of  art,  which  the  producing  nations,  so  far 
from  intending  to  be  their  “joy  for  ever,”  only  hope  to  sell 
as  soon  as  possible.  Yet  the  motto  was  chosen  with  uncom- 
prehended felicity  : for  there  never  was,  nor  can  be,  any  es- 
sential beauty  possessed  by  a work  of  art,  which  is  not  based 
on  the  conception  of  its  honoured  permanence,  and  local  in- 
fluence, as  a part  of  appointed  and  precious  furniture,  either 
in  the  cathedral,  the  house,  or  the  joyful  thoroughfare,  of 
nations  which  enter  their  gates  with  thanksgiving,  and  their 
courts  with  praise. 

“ Their  ” courts — or  “His”  courts; — in  the  mind  of  such 
races,  the  expressions  are  synonymous  : and  the  habits  of 
life  which  recognise  the  delightfulness,  confess  also  the  sa- 
credness, of  homes  nested  round  the  seat  of  a worship  un- 
shaken by  insolent  theory  : themselves  founded  on  an  abiding 
affection  for  the  past,  and  care  for  the  future  ; and  approached 
by  paths  open  only  to  the  activities  of  honesty,  and  traversed 
only  by  the  footsteps  of  peace. 

The  exposition  of  these  truths,  to  which  I have  given  the 
chief  energy  of  my  own  life,  will  be  found  in  the  following 


140 


PREFACE. 


pages  first  undertaken  systematically  and  in  logical  sequence  ; 
and  what  I have  since  written  on  the  political  influence  of  the 
Arts  has  been  little  more  than  the  expansion  of  these  first 
lectures,  in  the  reprint  of  which  not  a sentence  is  omitted  or 
changed. 

The  supplementary  papers  added  contain,  in  briefest  form, 
the  aphorisms  respecting  principles  of  art-teaching  of  which 
the  attention  I gave  to  this  subject  during  the  continuance 
of  my  Professorship  at  Oxford  confirms  me  in  the  earnest  and 
contented  re-assertion. 

John  Buskin. 

Brxntwood,  April  29M,  1880, 


“A  JOY  FOR  EVER.” 


LECTURE  I. 

THE  DISCOVERY  AND  APPLICATION  OF  ART, 

A Lecture  delivered  at  Manchester,  July  10,  1857. 

Among  the  various  characteristics  of  the  age  in  which  we 
live,  as  compared  with  other  ages  of  this  not  yet  very  experi- 
enced world,  one  of  the  most  notable  appears  to  me  to  be  the 
just  and  wholesome  contempt  in  which  we  hold  poverty.  I 
repeat,  the  just  and  wholesome  contempt ; though  I see  that 
some  of  my  hearers  look  surprised  at  the  expression.  I 
assure  them,  I use  it  in  sincerity  ; and  I should  not  have  ven- 
tured to  ask  you  to  listen  to  me  this  evening,  unless  I had 
entertained  a profound  respect  for  wealth — true  wealth,  that 
is  to  say  ; for,  of  course,  we  ought  to  respect  neither  wealth 
nor  anything  else  that  is  false  of  its  kind  : and  the  distinction 
between  real  and  false  wealth  is  one  of  the  points  on  which  I 
shall  have  a few  words  presently  to  say  to  you.  But  true 
wealth  I hold,  as  I said,  in  great  honour  ; and  sympathize, 
for  the  most  part,  with  that  extraordinary  feeling  of  the  pres- 
ent age  which  publicly  pays  this  honour  to  riches.  I cannot, 
however,  help  noticing  how  extraordinary  it  is,  and  how  this 
epoch  of  ours  differs  from  all  bygone  epochs  in  having  no 
philosophical  nor  religious  worshippers  of  the  ragged  godship 
of  poverty.  In  the  classical  ages,  not  only  were  there  people 
who  voluntarily  lived  in  tubs,  and  who  used  gravely  to  main- 
tain the  superiority  of  tub-life  to  town-life,  but  the  Greeks 
and  Latins  seem  to  have  looked  on  these  eccentric,  and  I do 
not  scruple  to  say,  absurd  people,  with  as  much  respect  as  we 


142 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


do  upon  large  capitalists  and  landed  proprietors ; so  that 
really,  in  those  days,  no  one  could  be  described  as  purse 
proud,  but  only  as  empty-purse  proud.  And  no  less  distinct 
than  the  honour  which  those  curious  Greek  people  pay  to  their 
conceited  poor,  is  the  disrespectful  manner  in  which  they 
speak  of  the  rich  ; so  that  one  cannot  listen  long  either  to 

them,  or  to  the  Roman  writers  who  imitated  them,  without 
finding  oneself  entangled  in  all  sorts  of  plausible  absurdities  ; 
hard  upon  being  convinced  of  the  uselessness  of  collecting  that 
heavy  yellow  substance  which  we  call  gold,  and  led  generally 
to  doubt  all  the  most  established  maxims  of  political  economy. 
Nor  are  matters  much  better  in  the  middle  ages.  For  the 
Greeks  and  Romans  contented  themselves  with  mocking  at 
rich  people,  and  constructing  merry  dialogues  between  Charon 
and  Diogenes  or  Menippus,  in  which  the  ferrymen  and  the 
cynic  rejoiced  together  as  they  saw  kings  and  rich  men  com- 
ing down  to  the  shore  of  Acheron,  in  lamenting  and  lamenta- 
ble crowds,  casting  their  crowns  into  the  dark  waters,  and 
searching,  sometimes  in  vain,  for  the  last  coin  out  of  all  their 
treasures  that  could  ever  be  of  use  to  them.  But  these  Pagan 
views  of  the  matter  were  indulgent,  compared  with  those 
which  were  held  in  the  middle  ages,  when  wealth  seems  to 
have  been  looked  upon  by  the  best  of  men  not  only  as  con- 
temptible, but  as  criminal.  The  purse  round  the  neck  is, 

then,  one  of  the  principal  signs  of  condemnation  in  the  pic- 
tured inferno  ; and  the  Spirit  of  Poverty  is  reverenced  with 
subjection  of  heart,  and  faithfulness  of  affection,  like  that  of  a 
loyal  knight  for  his  lady,  or  a loyal  subject  for  his  queen. 
And  truly,  it  requires  some  boldness  to  quit  ourselves  of  these 
feelings,  and  to  confess  their  partiality  or  their  error,  which, 
nevertheless,  we  are  certainly  bound  to  do.  For  wealth  is 
simply  one  of  the  greatest  powers  which  can  be  entrusted  to 
human  hands  : a power,  not  indeed  to  be  envied,  because  it 
seldom  makes  us  happy  ; but  still  less  to  be  abdicated  or 
despised  ; while,  in  these  days,  and  in  this  country,  it  has 
become  a power  all  the  more  notable,  in  that  the  possessions  of 
a rich  man  are  not  represented,  as  they  used  to  be,  by  wedges 
of  gold  or  coffers  of  jewels,  but  by  masses  of  men  variously 


DISCOVERY  AND  APPLICATION. 


143 


employed,  over  whose  bodies  and  minds  the  wealth,  accord- 
ing to  its  direction,  exercises  harmful  or  helpful  influence,  and 
becomes,  in  that  alternative,  Mammon  either  of  Unrighteous* 
ness  or  of  Righteousness. 

Now,  it  seemed  to  me  that  since,  in  the  name  you  have 
given  to  this  great  gathering  of  British  pictures,  you  recognise 
them  as  Treasures — that  is,  I suppose,  as  part  and  parcel  of 
the  real  wealth  of  the  country — you  might  not  be  uninterested 
in  tracing  certain  commercial  questions  connected  with  this 
particular  form  of  wealth.  Most  persons  express  themselves 
as  surprised  at  its  quantity  ; not  having  known  before  to  what 
an  extent  good  art  had  been  accumulated  in  England : and  it 
will,  therefore,  I should  think,  be  held  a worthy  subject  of 
consideration,  what  are  the  political  interests  involved  in  such 
accumulations  ; what  kind  of  labour  they  represent,  and  how 
this  labour  may  in  general  be  applied  and  economized,  so  as 
to  produce  the  richest  results. 

Now,  you  must  have  patience  with  me,  if  in  approaching 
the  specialty  of  this  subject,  I dw7ell  a little  on  certain  points 
of  general  political  science  already  known  or  established  : for 
though  thus,  as  I believe,  established,  some  which  I shall  have 
occasion  to  rest  arguments  on  are  not  yet  by  any  means  univer- 
sally accepted  ; and  therefore,  though  I will  not  lose  time  in  any 
detailed  defence  of  them,  it  is  necessary  that  I should  distinctly 
tell  you  in  what  form  I receive,  and  wash  to  argue  from  them ; 
and  this  the  more,  because  there  may  perhaps  be  a part  of 
my  audience  wdio  have  not  interested  themselves  in  political 
economy,  as  it  bears  on  ordinary  fields  of  labour,  but  may  yet 
wish  to  hear  in  what  way  its  principles  can  be  applied  to  Art. 
I shall,  therefore,  take  leave  to  trespass  on  your  patience  with 
a few  elementary  statements  in  the  outset,  and  with  the  ex- 
pression of  some  general  principles,  here  and  there,  in  the 
course  of  our  particular  inquiry. 

To  begin,  then,  with  one  of  these  necessary  truisms  : all 
economy,  whether  of  states,  households,  or  individuals,  may 
be  defined  to  be  the  art  of  managing  labour.  The  world  is 
so  regulated  by  the  laws  of  Providence,  that  a man’s  labour, 
well  applied,  is  always  amply  sufficient  to  provide  him  during 


144 


A JOT  FOR  EVER. 


his  life  with  all  things  needful  to  him,  and  not  only  with  those, 
but  with  many  pleasant  objects  of  luxury  ; and  yet  farther,  to 
procure  him  large  intervals  of  healthful  rest  and  serviceable 
leisure.  And  a nation’s  labour,  well  applied,  is  in  like  manner 
amply  sufficient  to  provide  its  whole  population  with  good 
food  and  comfortable  habitation  ; and  not  with  those  only, 
but  with  good  education  besides,  and  objects  of  luxury, 
art  treasures,  such  as  these  you  have  around  you  noW.  But 
by  those  same  laws  of  Nature  and  Providence,  if  the  labour 
of  the  nation  or  of  the  individual  be  misapplied,  and  much 
more  if  it  be  insufficient, — if  the  nation  or  man  be  indolent 
and  unwise, — suffering  and  want  result,  exactly  in  proportion 
to  the  indolence  and  improvidence, — to  the  refusal  of  labour, 
or  to  the  misapplication  of  it.  Wherever  you  see  want,  or 
misery,  or  degradation,  in  this  world  about  you,  there,  be 
sure,  either  industry  has  been  wanting,  or  industry  has  been 
in  error.  It  is  not  accident,  it  is  not  Heaven-commanded 
calamity,  it  is  not  the  original  and  inevitable  evil  of  man’s 
nature,  which  fill  your  streets  with  lamentation,  and  your 
graves  with  prey.  It  is  only  that,  when  there  should  have 
been  providence,  there  has  been  waste  ; when  there  should 
have  been  labour,  there  has  been  lasciviousness  ; and  wilful- 
ness, when  there  should  have  been  subordination.* 

Now,  we  have  warped  the  word  “ economy  ” in  our  English 
language  into  a meaning  which  it  has  no  business  whatever  to 
bear.  In  our  use  of  it,  it  constantly  signifies  merely  sparing 
or  saving  ; economy  of  money  means  saving  money — economy 
of  time,  sparing  time,  and  so  on.  But  that  is  a wdiolly  bar- 
barous use  of  the  word — barbarous  in  a double  sense,  for  it  is 
not  English,  and  it  is  bad  Greek  ; barbarous  in  a treble  sense, 
for  it  is  not  English,  it  is  bad  Greek,  and  it  is  worse  sense. 
Economy  no  more  means  saving  money  than  it  means  spend- 
ing money.  It  means,  the  administration  of  a house  ; its 
stewardship  ; spending  or  saving  that  is,  whether  money  or 
time,  or  anything  else,  to  the  best  possible  advantage.  In 
the  simplest  and  clearest  definition  of  it,  economy,  whether 

* Proverbs  xiii  23,  “ Much  food  is  in  the  tillage  of  the  poor,  but 
there  is  that  is  destroyed  for  want  of  judgment,” 


DISCOVERY  AND  APPLICATION. 


145 


public  or  private,  means  the  wise  management  of  labour ; 
and  it  means  this  mainly  in  three  senses  : namely,  first,  apply - 
ing  your  labour  rationally  ; secondly,  preserving  its  produce 
carefully  ; lastly,  distributing  its  produce  seasonably. 

I say  first,  applying  your  labour  rationally  ; that  is,  so  as  to 
obtain  the  most  precious  things  you  can,  and  the  most  lasting 
things,  by  it : not  growing  oats  in  land  where  you  can  grow 
wheat,  nor  putting  fine  embroidery  on  a stuff  that  will  not 
wear.  Secondly,  preserving  its  produce  carefully  ; that  is  to 
say,  laying  up  your  wheat  wisely  in  storehouses  for  the  time 
of  famine,  and  keeping  your  embroidery  watchfully  from  the 
moth ; and  lastly,  distributing  its  produce  seasonably  ; that 
is  to  say,  being  able  to  carry  your  corn  at  once  to  the  place 
where  the  people  are  hungry,  and  your  embroideries  to  the 
places  where  they  are  gay  ; so  fulfilling  in  all  ways  the  Wise 
Man’s  description,  whether  of  the  queenly  housewife  or 
queenly  nation  : “She  risetli  while  it  is  yet  night,  and  givetli 
meat  to  her  household,  and  a portion  to  her  maidens.  She 
maketh  herself  coverings  of  tapestry,  her  clothing  is  silk  and 
purple.  Strength  and  honour  are  in  her  clothing,  and  she 
shall  rejoice  in  time  to  come.” 

Now,  you  will  observe  that  in  this  description  of  the  perfect 
economist,  or  mistress  of  a household,  there  is  a studied  ex- 
pression of  the  balanced  division  of  her  care  between  the  two 
great  objects  of  utility  and  splendour  ; in  her  right  hand, 
food  and  flax,  for  life  and  clothing ; in  her  left  hand,  the  pur- 
ple and  the  needlework,  for  honour  and  for  beauty.  All  per- 
fect housewifery  or  national  economy  is  known  by  these  two 
divisions  ; wherever  either  is  wanting,  the  economy  is  imper- 
fect. If  the  motive  of  pomp  prevails,  and  the  care  of  the  na- 
tional economist  is  directed  only  to  the  accumulation  of  gold, 
and  of  pictures,  and  of  silk  and  marble,  you  know  at  once  that 
the  time  must  soon  come  when  all  these  treasures  shall  be 
scattered  and  blasted  in  national  ruin.  If,  on  the  contrary, 
the  element  of  utility  prevails,  and  the  nation  disdains  to  oc- 
cupy itself  in  any  wise  with  the  arts  of  beauty  or  delight,  not 
only  a certain  quantity  of  its  energy  calculated  for  exercise  in 
those  arts  alone  must  be  entirely  wasted,  which  is  bad  econ- 


146 


A JOT  FOR  EVER. 


omy,  but  also  tlae  passions  connected  with  the  utilities  of 
property  become  morbidly  strong,  and  a mean  lust  of  accu- 
mulation, merely  for  the  sake  of  accumulation,  or  even  of 
labour,  merely  for  the  sake  of  labour,  w7ill  banish  at  least  the 
serenity  and  the  morality  of  life,  as  completely,  and  perhaps 
more  ignobly,  than  even  the  lavishness  of  pride,  and  the  light- 
ness of  pleasure.  And  similarly,  and  much  more  visibly,  in 
private  and  household  economy,  you  may  judge  always  of  its 
perfectness  by  its  fair  balance  between  the  use  and  the  pleas- 
ure of  its  possessions.  You  will  see  the  wise  cottager’s  gar- 
den trimly  divided  between  its  well-set  vegetables,  and  its 
fragrant  flowers  ; you  will  see  the  good  housewife  taking 
pride  in  her  pretty  table-cloth,  and  her  glittering  shelves,  no 
less  than  in  her  well-dressed  dish,  and  her  full  storeroom  ; the 
care  in  her  countenance  will  alternate  with  gaiety  ; and  though 
you  "will  reverence  her  in  her  seriousness,  you  will  know  her 
best  by  her  smile. 

Now,  as  you  will  have  anticipated,  I am  going  to  address 
you,  on  this  and  our  succeeding  evening,  chiefly  on  the  sub- 
ject of  that  economy  which  relates  rather  to  the  garden  than 
the  farm-yard.  I shall  ask  you  to  consider  with  me  the  kind 
of  laws  by  which  we  shall  best  distribute  the  beds  of  our  na- 
tional garden,  and  raise  in  it  the  sweetest  succession  of  trees 
pleasant  to  the  sight,  and  (in  no  forbidden  sense)  to  be  de- 
sired to  make  us  wise.  But,  before  proceeding  to  open  this 
specialty  of  our  subject,  let  me  pause  for  a few  moments  to 
plead  wTith  you  for  the  acceptance  of  that  principle  of  govern- 
ment or  authority  which  must  be  at  the  root  of  all  economy, 
whether  for  use  or  for  pleasure.  I said,  a few  minutes  ago, 
that  a nation’s  labour,  well  applied,  w7as  amply  sufficient  to 
provide  its  whole  population  with  good  food,  comfortable 
clothing,  and  pleasant  luxury.  But  the  good,  instant,  and 
constant  application  is  everything.  We  must  not,  when  our 
strong  hands  are  thrown  out  of  work,  look  wildly  about  for 
want  of  something  to  do  with  them.  If  ever  we  feel  that 
want,  it  is  a sign  that  all  our  household  is  out  of  order. 
Fancy  a farmer’s  wife,  to  whom  one  or  two  of  her  servants 
should  come  at  twelve  o’clock  at  noon,  crying  that  they  had 


DISCOVERY  AND  APPLICATION. 


147 


got  nothing  to  do  ; that  they  did  not  know  what  to  do  next : 
and  fancy  still  farther,  the  said  farmer’s  wife  looking  hope- 
lessly about  her  rooms  and  yard,  they  being  all  the  while  con- 
siderably in  disorder,  not  knowing  where  to  set  the  spare 
hand-maidens  to  work,  and  at  last  complaining  bitterly  that 
she  had  been  obliged  to  give  them  their  dinner  for  nothing. 
That’s  the  type  of  the  kind  of  political  economy  we  practise 
too  often  in  England.  Would  you  not  at  once  assert  of  such 
a mistress  that  she  knew  nothing  of  her  duties  ? and  would 
you  not  be  certain,  if  the  household  were  rightly  managed, 
the  mistress  would  be  only  too  glad  at  any  moment  to  have 
the  help  of  any  number  of  spare  hands  ; that  she  would  know 
in  an  instant  what  to  set  them  to  ; — in  an  instant  what  part 
of  to-morrow’s  work  might  be  most  serviceably  forwarded, 
what  part  of  next  month’s  work  most  wisely  provided  for,  or 
what  new  task  of  some  profitable  kind  undertaken  ? and  when 
the  evening  came,  and  she  dismissed  her  servants  to  theii 
recreation  or  their  rest,  or  gathered  them  to  the  reading 
round  the  work-table,  under  the  eaves  in  the  sunset,  would 
you  not  be  sure  to  find  that  none  of  them  had  been  over- 
tasked by  her,  just  because  none  had  been  left  idle;  that 
everything  had  been  accomplished  because  all  had  been  em- 
ployed ; that  the  kindness  of  the  mistress  had  aided  her  pres- 
ence of  mind,  and  the  slight  labour  had  been  entrusted  to  the 
weak,  and  the  formidable  to  the  strong  ; and  that  as  none 
had  been  dishonoured  by  inactivity,  so  none  had  been  broken 
by  toil  ? 

Now,  the  precise  counterpart  of  such  a household  would  be 
seen  in  a nation  in  which  political  economy  was  rightly  under- 
stood. You  complain  of  the  difficulty  of  finding  work  for  your 
men.  Depend  upon  it  the  real  difficulty  rather  is  to  find  men 
for  your  work.  The  serious  question  for  you  is  not  how  many 
you  have  to  feed,  but  how  much  you  have  to  do  ; it  is  our  in- 
activity, not  our  hunger,  that  ruins  us  : let  us  never  fear  that 
our  servants  should  have  a good  appetite — our  wealth  is  in 
their  strength,  not  in  their  starvation.  Look  around  this 
island  of  yours,  and  see  what  you  have  to  do  in  it.  The  sea 
roars  against  your  harbourless  cliffs — you  have  to  build  the 


148 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


breakwater,  and  dig  the  port  of  refuge  ; the  unclean  pestilence 
ravins  in  your  streets — you  have  to  bring  the  full  stream  from 
the  hills,  and  to  send  the  free  winds  through  the  thoroughfare  ; 
the  famine  blanches  your  lips  and  eats  away  your  flesh — you 
have  to  dig  the  moor  and  dry  the  marsh,  to  bid  the  morass 
give  forth  instead  of  engulphing,  and  to  wring  the  honey  and 
oil  out  of  the  rock.  These  things,  and  thousands  such,  we 
have  to  do,  and  shall  have  to  do  constantly,  on  this  great  farm 
of  ours  ; for  do  not  suppose  that  it  is  anything  else  than  that. 
Precisely  the  same  laws  of  economy  which  apply  to  the  culti- 
vation of  a farm  or  an  estate  apply  to  the  cultivation  of  a prov- 
ince or  of  an  island.  Whatever  rebuke  you  would  address  to 
the  improvident  master  of  an  ill-managed  patrimony,  precisely 
that  rebuke  we  should  address  to  ourselves,  so  far  as  we  leave 
our  population  in  idleness  and  our  country  in  disorder.  What 
would  you  say  to  the  lord  of  an  estate  who  complained  to  you 
of  his  poverty  and  disabilities,  and,  when  you  pointed  out  to 
him  that  his  land  was  half  of  it  overrun  with  weeds,  and  that 
his  fences  were  all  in  ruin,  and  that  his  cattle-sheds  were  roof- 
less, and  his  labourers  lying  under  the  hedges  faint  for  want 
of  food,  he  answered  to  you  that  it  would  ruin  him  to  weed 
his  land  or  to  roof  his  sheds — that  those  were  too  costly  oper- 
ations for  him  to  undertake,  and  that  he  knew  not  how  to 
feed  his  labourers  nor  pay  them  ? Would  you  not  instantly 
answer,  that  instead  of  ruining  him  to  weed  his  fields,  it  would 
save  him  ; that  his  inactivity  was  his  destruction,  and  that  to 
set  his  labourers  to  work  was  to  feed  them  ? Now  you  may 
add  acre  to  acre,  and  estate  to  estate,  as  far  as  you  like,  but 
you  will  never  reach  a compass  of  ground  which  shall  escape 
from  the  authority  of  these  simple  laws.  The  principles 
which  are  right  in  the  administration  of  a few  fields,  are  right 
also  in  the  administration  of  a great  country  from  horizon  to 
horizon  : idleness  does  not  cease  to  be  ruinous  because  it  is 
extensive,  nor  labour  to  be  productive  because  it  is  universal. 

Nay,  but  you  reply,  there  is  one  vast  difference  between  the 
nation’s  economy  and  the  private  man’s  : the  farmer  has  full 
authority  over  his  labourers  ; he  can  direct  them  to  do  what 
is  needed  to  be  done,  whether  they  like  it  or  not ; and  he  can 


DISCOVERY  AND  APPLICATION. 


149 


turn  them  away  if  they  refuse  to  work,  or  impede  others  in 
their  working,  or  are  disobedient,  or  quarrelsome.  There  is 
this  great  difference  ; it  is  precisely  this  difference  on  which  I 
wish  to  fix  your  attention,  for  it  is  precisely  this  difference 
which  you  have  to  do  away  with.  We  know  the  necessity  oi 
authority  in  farm,  or  in  fleet,  or  in  army  ; but  we  commonly 
refuse  to  admit  it  in  the  body  of  the  nation.  Let  us  consider 
this  point  a little. 

In  the  various  awkward  and  unfortunate  efforts  which  the 
French  have  made  at  the  development  of  a social  system, 
they  have  at  least  stated  one  true  principle,  that  of  fraternity 
or  brotherhood.  Do  not  be  alarmed  ; they  got  all  wrong  in 
their  experiments,  because  they  quite  forgot  that  this  fact  of 
fraternity  implied  another  fact  quite  as  important — that  of 
paternity,  or  fatherhood.  That  is  to  say,  if  they  were  to 
regard  the  nation  as  one  family,  the  condition  of  unity  in  that 
family  consisted  no  less  in  their  having  a head,  or  a father, 
than  in  their  being  faithful  and  affectionate  members,  or 
brothers.  But  we  must  not  forget  this,  for  we  have  long  con- 
fessed it  with  our  lips,  though  we  refuse  to  confess  it  in  our 
lives.  For  half  an  hour  every  Sunday  we  expect  a man  in  a 
black  gown,  supposed  to  be  telling  us  truth,  to  address  us  as 
brethren,  though  we  should  be  shocked  at  the  notion  of  any 
brotherhood  existing  among  us  out  of  church.  And  we  can 
hardly  read  a few  sentences  on  any  political  subject  without 
running  a chance  of  crossing  the  phrase  “ paternal  govern- 
ment,” though  we  should  be  utterly  horror-struck  at  the  idea 
of  governments  claiming  anything  like  a father’s  authority 
over  us.  Now,  I believe  those  two  formal  phrases  are  in  both 
instances  perfectly  binding  and  accurate,  and  that  the  image 
of  the  farm  and  its  servants  which  I have  hitherto  used,  as  ex- 
pressing a wholesome  national  organization,  fails  only  of  doing 
so,  not  because  it  is  too  domestic,  but  because  it  is  not  do- 
mestic enough  ; because  the  real  type  of  a wTell-organized 
nation  must  be  presented,  not  by  a farm  cultivated  by  ser- 
vants who  wrought  for  hire,  and  might  be  turned  away  if 
they  refused  to  labour,  but  by  a farm  in  which  the  master  was 
a father,  and  in  which  all  the  servants  were  sons  ; which  im* 


150 


A JOT  FOR  EVER. 


plied,  therefore,  in  all  its  regulations,  not  merely  the  order  of 
expediency,  but  the  bonds  of  affection  and  responsibilities  of 
relationship ; and  in  which  all  acts  and  services  were  not  only 
to  be  sweetened  by  brotherly  concord,  but  to  be  enforced  by 
fatherly  authority.* 

Observe,  I do  not  mean  in  the  least  that  we  ought  to  place 
such  an  authority  in  the  hands  of  any  one  person,  or  of  any 
class,  or  body  of  persons.  But  I do  mean  to  say  that  as  an 
individual  who  conducts  himself  wisely  must  make  laws  for 
himself  which  at  some  time  or  other  may  appear  irksome  or 
injurious,  but  which,  precisely  at  the  time  they  appear  most 
irksome,  it  is  most  necessary  he  should  obey,  so  a nation 
which  means  to  conduct  itself  wisely,  must  establish  authority 
over  itself,  vested  either  in  kings,  councils,  or  laws,  which  it 
must  resolve  to  obey,  even  at  times  when  the  law  or  authority 
appears  irksome  to  the  body  of  the  people,  or  injurious  to 
certain  masses  of  it.  And  this  kind  of  national  law  has  hitherto 
been  only  judicial ; contented,  that  is,  with  an  endeavour  to 
prevent  and  punish  violence  and  crime ; but,  as  we  advance 
in  our  social  knowledge,  we  shall  endeavour  to  make  our 
government  paternal  as  well  as  judicial ; that  is,  to  establish 
such  laws  and  authorities  as  may  at  once  direct  us  in  our 
occupations,  protect  us  against  our  follies,  and  visit  us  in  our 
distresses : a government  which  shall  repress  dishonesty,  as 
now  it  punishes  theft ; which  shall  show  how  the  discipline  of 
the  masses  may  be  brought  to  aid  the  toils  of  peace,  as  dis- 
cipline of  the  masses  has  hitherto  knit  the  sinews  of  battle  ; a 
government  which  shall  have  its  soldiers  of  the  ploughshare 
as  well  as  its  soldiers  of  the  sword,  and  which  shall  distribute 
more  proudly  its  golden  crosses  of  industry' — golden  as  the 
glow  of  the  harvest,  than  now  it  grants  its  bronze  crosses  of 
honour — bronzed  with  the  crimson  of  blood. 

I have  not,  of  course,  time  to  insist  on  the  nature  or  details 
of  government  of  this  kind  ; only  I wish  to  plead  for  your  sev- 
eral and  future  consideration  of  this  one  truth,  that  the  notion 
of  Discipline  and  Interference  lies  at  the  very  root  of  all  hu- 
man progress  or  power  ; that  the  “ Let  alone  ” principle  is,  in 
* See  note  1st,  in  Addenda. 


DISCOVERY  AND  APPLICATION, 


151 


all  tilings  which  man  has  to  do  with,  the  principle  of  death  j 
that  it  is  ruin  to  him,  certain  and  total,  if  he  lets  his  land 
alone — if  he  lets  his  fellow-men  alone — if  he  lets  his  own  soul 
alone.  That  his  whole  life,  on  the  contrary,  must,  if  it  is 
healthy  life,  be  continually  one  of  ploughing  and  pruning, 
rebuking  and  helping,  governing  and  punishing  ; and  that 
therefore  it  is  only  in  the  concession  of  some  great  principle 
of  restraint  and  interference  in  national  action  that  he  can 
ever  hope  to  find  the  secret  of  protection  against  national 
degradation.  I believe  that  the  masses  have  a right  to  claim 
education  from  their  government  ; but  only  so  far  as  they  ac- 
knowledge the  duty  of  yielding  obedience  to  their  govern- 
ment. I believe  they  have  a right  to  claim  employment  from 
their  governors  ; but  only  so  far  as  they  yield  to  the  governor 
the  direction  and  discipline  of  their  labour  ; and  it  is  only  so 
far  as  they  grant  to  the  men  whom  they  may  set  over  them 
the  father’s  authority  to  check  the  childishness  of  national 
fancy,  and  direct  the  waywardness  of  national  energy,  that 
they  have  a right  to  ask  that  none  of  their  distresses  should 
be  unrelieved,  none  of  their  weaknesses  unwatclied  ; and  that 
no  grief,  nor  nakedness,  nor  peril  should  exist  for  them, 
against  which  the  father’s  hand  was  not  outstretched,  or  the 
father’s  shield  uplifted.* 

Now,  I have  pressed  this  upon  you  at  more  length  than  is 
needful  or  proportioned  to  our  present  purposes  of  inquiry, 

* Compare  Wordsworth’s  Essay  on  the  Poor-Law  Amendment  Bill.  I 
quote  one  important  passage  : — “ But,  if  it  be  not  safe  to  touch  the  ab- 
stract question  of  man’s  right  in  a social  state  to  help  himself  even  in 
the  last  extremity,  may  we  not  still  contend  for  the  duty  of  a Christian 
government,  standing  in  loco  parentis  towards  all  its  subjects,  to  make 
such  effectual  provision  that  no  one  shall  be  in  danger  of  perishing 
either  through  the  neglect  or  harshness  of  its  legislation  ? Or,  waiving 
this,  is  it  not  indisputable  that  the  claim  of  the  State  to  the  allegiance, 
involves  the  protection  of  the  subject  ? And,  as  all  rights  in  one  party 
impose  a correlative  duty  upon  another,  it  follows  that  the  right  of  the 
State  to  require  the  services  of  its  members,  even  to  the  jeoparding  of 
their  lives  in  the  common  defence,  establishes  a right  in  the  people  (not 
to  be  gainsaid  by  utilitarians  and  economists)  to  public  support  when, 
from  any  cause,  they  may  be  unable  to  support  themselves.” — (See  note 
2d,  in  Addenda.) 


152 


A JOT  FOR  EVER. 


because  I would  not  for  the  first  time  speak  to  you  on  this 
subject  of  political  economy  without  clearly  stating  what  I be- 
lieve to  be  its  first  grand  principle.  But  its  bearing  on  the 
matter  in  hand  is  chiefly  to  prevent  you  from  at  once  too  vio- 
lentfy  dissenting  from  me  when  what  I may  state  to  you  as 
advisable  economy  in  art  appears  to  imply  too  much  restraint 
or  interference  with  the  freedom  of  the  patron  or  artist.  We 
are  a little  apt,  though  on  the  whole  a prudent  nation,  to  act 
too  immediately  on  our  impulses,  even  in  matters  merely  com? 
mercial ; much  more  in  those  involving  continual  appeals  to 
our  fancies.  How  far,  therefore,  the  proposed  systems  or  re- 
straints may  be  advisable,  it  is  for  you  to  judge  ; only  I pray 
you  not  to  be  offended  with  them  merely  because  they  are  sys- 
tems and  restraints.  Do  you  at  all  recollect  that  interesting 
passage  of  Carlyle,  in  which  he  compares,  in  this  country  and 
at  this  day,  the  understood  and  commercial  value  of  man  and 
horse  ; and  in  which  he  wonders  that  the  horse,  with  its  in- 
ferior brains  and  its  awkward  hoofiness,  instead  of  handiness, 
should  be  always  worth  so  many  tens  or  scores  of  pounds  in 
the  market,  while  the  man,  so  far  from  always  commanding 
his  price  in  the  market,  would  often  be  thought  to  confer  a 
service  on  the  community  by  simply  killing  himself  out  of 
their  way  ? Well,  Carlyle  does  not  answer  his  own  question, 
because  he  supposes  we  shall  at  once  see  the  answer.  The 
value  of  the  horse  consists  simply  in  the  fact  of  your  being 
able  to  put  a bridle  on  him.  The  value  of  the  man  consists 
precisely  in  the  same  thing.  If  you  can  bridle  him,  or  which 
is  better,  if  he  can  bridle  himself  he  will  be  a valuable  creat- 
ure directly.  Otherwise,  in  a commercial  point  of  view,  his 
value  is  either  nothing,  or  accidental  only.  Only,  of  course, 
the  proper  bridle  of  man  is  not  a leathern  one ; what  kind  of 
texture  it  is  rightly  made  of,  we  find  from  that  command,  “ Be 
ye  not  as  the  horse  or  as  the  mule  which  have  no  understand- 
ing, whose  mouths  must  be  held  in  with  bit  and  bridle.  ” You 
are  not  to  be  without  the  reins,  indeed  ; but  they  are  to  be  of 
another  kind  ; “I  will  guide  thee  with  mine  Eye.”  So  the 
bridle  of  man  is  to  be  the  Eye  of  God  ; and  if  he  rejects  that 
guidance,  then  the  next  best  for  him  is  the  horse’s  and  the 


DISCOVERT  AND  APPLICATION. 


153 


mule’s,  which  have  no  understanding  ; and  if  he  rejects  that, 
and  takes  the  bit  fairly  in  his  teeth,  then  there  is  nothing 
more  left  for  him  than  the  blood  that  comes  out  of  the  city, 
up  to  the  horsebridles. 

Quitting,  however,  at  last  these  general  and  serious  laws  of 
government — or  rather  bringing  them  down  to  our  own  busi* 
ness  in  hand — we  have  to  consider  three  points  of  discipline 
in  that  particular  branch  of  human  labour  which  is  concerned, 
not  with  procuring  of  food,  but  the  expression  of  emotion  ; 
we  have  to  consider  respecting  art ; first,  how  to  apply  our 
labour  to  it  ; then,  how  to  accumulate  or  preserve  the  re- 
sults of  labour  ; and  then,  how  to  distribute  them.  But  since 
in  art  the  labour  which  we  have  to  employ  is  the  labour  of  a 
particular  class  of  men — men  who  have  special  genius  for  the 
business,  we  have  not  only  to  consider  how  to  apply  the 
labour,  but  first  of  all  how  to  produce  the  labourer  ; and  thus 
the  question  in  this  particular  case  becomes  fourfold : first, 
how  to  get  your  man  of  genius  ; then,  how  to  employ  your 
man  of  genius ; then,  how  to  accumulate  and  preserve  his 
■work  in  the  greatest  quantity  ; and  lastly,  how  to  distribute 
his  wrork  to  the  best  national  advantage.  Let  us  take  up 
these  questions  in  succession. 

I.  Discovery. — How  are  we  to  get  our  men  of  genius  : that 
is  to  say,  by  what  means  may  we  produce  among  us,  at  any 
given  time,  the  greatest  quantity  of  effective  art-intellect  ? A 
wide  question,  you  say,  involving  an  account  of  all  the  best 
means  of  art  education.  Yes,  but  I do  not  mean  to  go  into 
the  consideration  of  those  ; I want  only  to  state  the  few  prin- 
ciples which  lie  at  the  foundation  of  the  matter.  Of  these, 
the  first  is  that  you  have  always  to  find  your  artist,  not  to 
make  him  ; you  can’t  manufacture  him,  an}I. * * * * * 7  more  than  you 

can  manufacture  gold.  You  can  find  him,  and  refine  him : 

you  dig  him  out  as  he  lies  nugget-fashion  in  the  mountain- 

stream  ; you  bring  him  home  ; and  you  make  him  into  cur- 

rent coin,  or  house  holdplate,  but  not  one  grain  of  him  can 

you  originally  produce.  A certain  quantity  of  art-intellect  is 

born  annually  in  every  nation,  greater  or  less  according  to  the 


154 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


nature  and  cultivation  of  the  nation,  or  race  of  men  ; but  a 
perfectly  fixed  quantity  annually,  not  increasable  by  one 
grain.  You  may  lose  it,  or  you  may  gather  it  ; you  may  let 
it  lie  loose  in  the  ravine,  and  buried  in  the  sands,  or  you  may 
make  kings’  thrones  of  it,  and  overlay  temple  gates  with  it, 
as  you  choose  ; but  the  best  you  can  do  with  it  is  always 
merely  sifting,  melting,  hammering,  purifying — never  creat- 
ing. And  there  is  another  thing  notable  about  this  artistical 
gold  ; not  only  is  it  limited  in  quantity,  but  in  use.  You 
need  not  make  thrones  or  golden  gates  with  it  unless  you 
like,  but  assuredly  you  can’t  do  anything  else  with  it.  You 
can’t  make  knives  of  it,  nor  armour,  nor  railroads.  The  gold 
won’t  cut  you,  and  it  won’t  carry  you  : put  it  to  a mechanical 
use,  and  you  destroy  it  at  once.  It  is  quite  true  that  in  the 
greatest  artists,  their  proper  artistical  faculty  is  united  with 
every  other ; and  you  may  make  use  of  the  other  faculties, 
and  let  the  artistical  one  lie  dormant.  For  aught  I know 
there  may  be  two  or  three  Leonardo  da  Vincis  employed  at 
this  moment  in  your  harbours  and  railroads : but  you  are  not 
employing  their  Leonardesque  or  golden  faculty  there,  you 
are  only  oppressing  and  destroying  it.  And  the  artistical 
gift  in  average  men  is  not  joined  with  others ; your  born 
painter,  if  you  don’t  make  a painter  of  him,  won’t  be  a first- 
rate  merchant,  or  lawyer ; at  all  events,  whatever  he  turns 
out,  his  own  special  gift  is  unemployed  by  you ; and  in 
no  wise  helps  him  in  that  other  business.  So  here  you  have 
a certain  quantity  of  a particular  sort  of  intelligence,  produced 
for  you  annually  by  providential  laws,  which  you  can  only 
make  use  of  by  setting  it  to  its  own  proper  work,  and  which 
any  attempt  to  use  otherwise  involves  the  dead  loss  of  so 
much  human  energy.  Well  then,  supposing  we  wish  to  em- 
ploy it,  how  is  it  to  be  best  discovered  and  refined.  It  is 
easily  enough  discovered.  To  wish  to  employ  it,  is  to  dis- 
cover it.  All  that  you  need  is,  a school  of  trial  * in  every  im- 
portant town,  in  which  those  idle  farmers’  lads  whom  their 
masters  never  can  keep  out  of  mischief,  and  those  stupid 
tailors’  ’prentices  who  are  always  stitching  the  sleeves  in 
* See  note  Sd,  in  Addenda. 


DISCOVERY  AND  APPLICATION 


155 


wrong  way  upwards,  may  have  a try  at  this  other  trade ; 
only  this  school  of  trial  must  not  be  entirely  regulated 
by  formal  laws  of  art  education,  but  must  ultimately  be  the 
workshop  of  a good  master  painter,  who  will  try  the  lads  with 
one  kind  of  art  and  another,  till  he  finds  out  what  they  are  fit 
for.  Next,  after  your  trial  school,  you  want  your  easy  and 
secure  employment,  which  is  the  matter  of  chief  importance. 
For,  even  on  the  present  system,  the  boys  who  have  really  in- 
tense art  capacity,  generally  make  painters  of  themselves  ; but 
then,  the  best  half  of  their  early  energy  is  lost  in  the  battle  of 
life.  Before  a good  painter  can  get  employment,  his  mind 
has  always  been  embittered,  and  his  genius  distorted.  A 
common  mind  usually  stoops,  in  plastic  chill,  to  whatever  is 
asked  of  it,  and  scrapes  or  daubs  its  way  complacently  into 
public  favour.*  But  your  great  men  quarrel  with  you,  and 
you  revenge  yourselves  by  starving  them  for  the  first  half  of 
their  lives.  Precisely  in  the  degree  in  which  any  painter  pos- 
sesses original  genius,  is  at  present  the  increase  of  moral  cer- 
tainty that  during  his  early  years  he  will  have  had  a hard  bat- 
tle to  fight;  and  that  just  at  the  time  when  his  conceptions  ought 
to  be  full  and  happy,  his  temper  gentle,  and  his  hopes  enthusi- 
astic— just  at  that  most  critical  period,  his  heart  is  full  of 
anxieties  and  household  cares  ; he  is  chilled  by  disappoint- 
ments, and  vexed  by  injustice  ; he  becomes  obstinate  in  his 
errors,  no  less  than  in  his  virtues,  and  the  arrows  of  his  aims 
are  blunted,  as  the  reeds  of  his  trust  are  broken. 

What  we  mainly  want,  therefore,  is  a means  of  sufficient 
and  unagitated  employment : not  holding  out  great  prizes  for 
which  young  painters  are  to  scramble  ; but  furnishing  all  with 
adequate  support,  and  opportunity  to  display  such  power  as 
they  possess  without  rejection  or  mortification.  I need  not 
say  that  the  best  field  of  labour  of  this  kind  would  be  pre- 
sented by  the  constant  progress  of  public  works  involving- 
various  decorations  ; and  we  will  presently  examine  what 
kind  of  public  works  may  thus,  advantageously  for  the  nation, 
be  in  constant  progress.  But  a more  important  matter  even 
than  this  of  steady  employment,  is  the  kind  of  criticism  with 
* See  note  4th,  in  Addenda. 


156 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


which  you,  the  public,  receive  the  works  of  the  young  men 
submitted  to  you.  You  may  do  much  harm  by  indiscreet 
praise  and  by  indiscreet  blame  ; but  remember,  the  chief 
harm  is  always  done  by  blame.  It  stands  to  reason  that  a 
young  man’s  work  cannot  be  perfect.  It  must  be  more  or  less 
ignorant ; it  must  be  more  or  less  feeble  ; it  is  likely  that  it 
may  be  more  or  less  experimental,  and  if  experimental,  here 
and  there  mistaken.  If,  therefore,  you  allow  yourself  to 
launch  out  into  sudden  barking  at  the  first  faults  you  see,  the 
probability  is  that  you  are  abusing  the  youth  for  some  defect 
naturally  and  inevitably  belonging  to  that  stage  of  his  prog- 
ress ; and  that  you  might  just  as  rationally  find  fault  with  a 
child  for  not  being  as  prudent  as  a privy  councillor,  or  with  a 
kitten  for  not  being  as  grave  as  a cat.  But  there  is  one  fault 
which  you  may  be  quite  sure  is  unnecessary,  and  therefore  a 
real  and  blameable  fault : that  is  haste,  involving  negligence. 
Whenever  you  see  that  a young  man’s  work  is  either  bold  or 
slovenly,  then  you  may  attack  it  firmly  ; sure  of  being  right. 
If  his  work  is  bold,  it  is  insolent ; repress  his  insolence  : if  it  is 
slovenly,  it  is  indolent  ; repress  his  indolence.  So  long  as  he 
works  in  that  dashing  or  impetuous  way,  the  best  hope  for 
him  is  in  your  contempt : and  it  is  only  by  the  fact  of  his  seem- 
ing not  to  seek  your  approbation  that  you  may  conjecture  he 
deserves  it. 

But  if  he  does  deserve  it,  be  sure  that  you  give  it  him,  else 
you  not  only  run  a chance  of  driving  him  from  the  right  road 
by  want  of  encouragement,  but  you  deprive  yourselves  of  the 
happiest  privilege  you  will  ever  have  of  rewarding  his  labour. 
For  it  is  only  the  young  who  can  receive  much  reward  from 
men’s  praise  : the  old  when  they  are  great,  get  too  far  beyond 
and  above  you  to  care  what  you  think  of  them.  You  may  urge 
them  then  with  sympathy,  and  surround  them  then  with  ac- 
clamation ; but  they  will  doubt  your  pleasure,  and  despise 
your  praise.  You  might  have  cheered  them  in  their  race 
through  the  asphodel  meadows  of  their  youth ; you  might 
have  brought  the  proud,  bright  scarlet  into  their  faces,  if  you 
had  but  cried  once  to  them  “ Well  done,”  as  they  dashed  up 
to  the  first  goal  of  their  early  ambition.  But  now,  their  pleas- 


DISCOVERY  AND  APPLICATION 


157 


ure  is  in  memory,  and  their  ambition  is  in  heaven.  They  can 
be  kind  to  you,  but  you  never  more  can  be  kind  to  them. 
You  may  be  fed  with  the  fruit  and  fulness  of  their  old  age, 
but  you  were  as  the  nipping  blight  to  them  in  their  blossom- 
ing, and  your  praise  is  only  as  the  warm  winds  of  autumn  to 
the  dying  branches. 

There  is  one  thought  still,  the  saddest  of  all,  bearing  on  this 
withholding  of  early  help.  It  is  possible,  in  some  noble  na- 
tures, that  the  warmth  and  the  affections  of  childhood  may  re- 
main unchilled,  though  unanswered  ; and  that  the  old  man’s 
heart  may  still  be  capable  of  gladness,  when  the  long-withheld 
sympathy  is  given  at  last.  But  in  these  noble  natures  it 
nearly  always  happens,  that  the  chief  motive  of  early  ambition 
has  not  been  to  give  delight  to  themselves,  but  to  their 
parents.  Every  noble  youth  looks  back,  as  to  the  chief est  joy 
which  this  world’s  honour  ever  gave  him,  to  the  moment  when 
first  he  saw  his  father’s  eyes  flash  with  pride,  and  his  mother 
turn  away  her  head,  lest  he  should  take  her  tears  for  tears  of 
sorrow.  Even  the  lover’s  joy,  when  some  worthiness  of  his  is 
acknowledged  before  his  mistress,  is  not  so  great  as  that,  for 
it  is  not  so  pure — the  desire  to  exalt  himself  in  her  eyes  mixes 
with  that  of  giving  her  delight ; but  he  does  not  need  to 
exalt  himself  in  his  parents’  eyes  : it  is  with  the  pure  hope  of 
giving  them  pleasure  that  he  comes  to  tell  them  what  he  has 
done,  or  what  has  been  said  of  him  ; and  therefore  he  has  a 
purer  pleasure  of  his  own.  And  this  purest  and  best  of  re- 
wards you  keep  from  him  if  you  can  : you  feed  him  in  his 
tender  youth  with  ashes  and  dishonour  ; and  then  you  come 
to  him,  obsequious,  but  too  late,  with  your  sharp  laurel  crown, 
the  dew  all  dried  from  off  its  leaves  ; and  you  thrust  it  into 
his  languid  hand,  and  he  looks  at  you  wistfully.  Wliat  shall 
he  do  with  it  ? What  can  he  do,  but  go  and  lay  it  on  his 
mother’s  grave? 

Thus,  then,  you  see  that  you  have  to  provide  for  your  young 
men  : first,  the  searching  or  discovering  school ; then  the  calm 
employment ; then  the  justice  of  praise  : one  thing  more  you 
have  to  do  for  them  in  preparing  them  for  full  service — namely, 
to  make,  in  the  noble  sense  of  the  word,  gentlemen  of  them  / 


158 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


that  is  to  say,  to  take  care  that  their  minds  receive  such  train- 
ing, that  in  all  they  paint  they  shall  see  and  feel  the  noblest 
things.  I am  sorry  to  say,  that  of  all  parts  of  an  artist’s  edu- 
cation this  is  the  most  neglected  among  us  ; and  that  even 
where  the  natural  taste  and  feeling  of  the  youth  have  been 
pure  and  true,  where  there  was  the  right  stuff  in  him  to  make 
a gentleman  of,  you  may  too  frequently  discern  some  jarring 
vents  in  his  mind,  and  elements  of  degradation  in  his  treat- 
ment of  subject,  owing  to  want  of  gentle  training,  and  of  the 
liberal  influence  of  literature.  This  is  quite  visible  in  our 
greatest  artists,  even  in  men  like  Turner  and  Gainsborough  ; 
while  in  the  common  grade  of  our  second-rate  painters  the 
evil  attains  a pitch  which  is  far  too  sadly  manifest  to  need  my 
dwelling  upon  it.  Now,  no  branch  of  art  economy  is  more 
important  than  that  of  making  the  intellect  at  your  disposal 
pure  as  well  as  powerful  ; so  that  it  may  always  gather  for 
you  the  sweetest  and  fairest  things.  The  same  quantity  of 
labour  from  the  same  man’s  hand,  will,  according  as  you  have 
trained  him,  produce  a lovely  and  useful  work,  or  a base  and 
hurtful  one  ; and  depend  upon  it,  whatever  value  it  may  pos- 
sess, by  reason  of  the  painter’s  skill,  its  chief  and  final  value, 
to  any  nation,  depends  upon  its  being  able  to  exalt  and  refine, 
as  well  as  to  please  ; and  that  the  picture  which  most  truly 
deserves  the  name  of  an  art-treasure,  is  that  which  has  been 
painted  by  a good  man. 

You  cannot  but  see  how  far  this  would  lead,  if  I were  to 
enlarge  upon  it.  I must  take  it  up  as  a separate  subject  some 
other  time  : only  noticing  at  present  that  no  money  could  be 
better  spent  by  a nation  than  in  providing  a liberal  and  disci- 
plined education  for  its  painters,  as  they  advance  into  the 
critical  period  of  their  youth  ; and  that  also,  a large  part  of 
their  power  during  life  depends  upon  the  kind  of  subjects 
which  you,  the  public,  ask  them  for,  and  therefore  the  kind 
of  thoughts  with  which  you  require  them  to  be  habitually  fa- 
miliar. I shall  have  more  to  say  on  this  head  when  we  come 
to  consider  what  employment  they  should  have  in  public 
buildings. 

There  are  many  other  points  of  nearly  as  much  importance 


DISCOVERY  AND  APPLICATION . 


159 


as  these,  to  be  explained  with  reference  to  the  development 
of  genius  ; but  I should  have  to  ask  you  to  come  and  hear  six 
lectures  instead  of  tw~o  if  I were  to  go  into  their  detail.  For 
instance,  I have  not  spoken  of  the  way  in  which  you  ought  to 
look  for  those  artificers  in  various  manual  trades,  who,  with- 
out possessing  the  order  of  genius  which  you  would  desire  to 
devote  to  higher  purposes,  yet  possess  wit,  and  humour,  and 
sense  of  colour,  and  fancy  for  form — all  commercially  valuable 
as  quantities  of  intellect,  and  all  more  or  less  expressible  in 
the  lower  arts  of  iron-work,  pottery,  decorative  sculpture,  and 
such  like.  But  these  details,  interesting  as  they  are,  I must 
commend  to  your  own  consideration,  or  leave  for  some  future 
inquiry.  I want  just  now  only  to  set  the  bearings  of  the  en- 
tire subject  broadly  before  you,  with  enough  of  detailed  illus- 
tration to  make  it  intelligible ; and  therefore  I must  quit  the 
first  head  of  it  here,  and  pass  to  the  second,  namely,  how 
best  to  employ  the  genius  we  discover.  A certain  quantity 
of  able  hands  and  heads  being  placed  at  our  disposal,  what 
shall  we  most  advisably  set  them  upon  ? 

II.  Application. — There  are  three  main  points  the  economist 
has  to  attend  to  in  this. 

First,  To  set  his  men  to  various  work. 

Secondly,  To  easy  work. 

Thirdly,  To  lasting  work. 

I shall  briefly  touch  on  the  first  two,  for  I want  to  arrest 
your  attention  on  the  last. 

I say  first,  to  various  work.  Supposing  you  have  two  men 
of  equal  power  as  landscape  painters— and  both  of  them  have 
an  hour  at  your  disposal.  You  wTould  not  set  them  both  to 
paint  the  same  piece  of  landscape.  You  would,  of  course, 
rather  have  two  subjects  than  a repetition  of  one. 

Well,  supposing  them  sculptors,  will  not  the  same  rule 
hold?  You  naturally  conclude  at  once  that  it  will  ; but  you 
will  have  hard  work  to  convince  your  modern  architects  of 
that.  They  will  put  twenty  men  to  work,  to  carve  twenty 
capitals  ; and  all  shall  be  the  same.  If  I could  show  you  the 
architects’  yards  in  England  just  now,  all  open  at  once,  per- 


160 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


haps  you  might  see  a thousand  clever  men,  all  employed  in 
carving  the  same  design.  Of  the  degradation  and  deathful- 
ness  to  the  art-intellect  of  the  country  involved  in  such  a habit, 
I have  more  or  less  been  led  to  speak  before  now  ; but  I have 
not  hitherto  marked  its  definite  tendency  to  increase  the  price 
of  work,  as  such.  When  men  are  employed  continually  in 
carving  the  same  ornaments,  they  get  into  a monotonous  and 
methodical  habit  of  labour — precisely  correspondent  to  that 
in  which  they  would  break  stones,  or  paint  house-walls.  Of 
course,  what  they  do  so  constantly,  they  do  easily  ; and  if  you 
excite  them  temporarily  by  an  increase  of  wages  you  may  get 
much  work  done  by  them  in  a little  time.  But,  unless  so 
stimulated,  men  condemned  to  a monotonous  exertion,  work 
— and  always,  by  the  laws  of  human  nature,  must  work — only 
at  a tranquil  rate,  not  producing  by  any  means  a maximum 
result  in  a given  time.  But  if  you  allow  them  to  vary  their  de- 
signs, and  thus  interest  their  heads  and  hearts  in  what  they 
are  doing,  you  will  find  them  become  eager,  first,  to  get  their 
ideas  expressed,  and  then  to  finish  the  expression  of  them  ; 
and  the  moral  energy  thus  brought  to  bear  on  the  matter 
quickens,  and  therefore  cheapens,  the  production  in  a most 
important  degree.  Sir  Thomas  Dean,  the  architect  of  the 
new  Museum  at  Oxford,  told  me,  as  I passed  through  Oxford 
on  my  way  here,  that  he  found  that,  owing  to  this  cause  alone, 
capitals  of  various  design  could  be  executed  cheaper  than  capi- 
tals of  similar  design  (the  amount  of  hand  labour  in  each  being 
the  same)  by  about  30  per  cent. 

Well,  that  is  the  first  way,  then,  in  which  you  will  employ 
your  intellect  well ; and  the  simple  observance  of  this  plain 
rule  of  political  economy  will  effect  a noble  revolution  in  your 
architecture,  such  as  you  cannot  at  present  so  much  as  con- 
ceive. Then  the  second  way  in  which  we  are  to  guard  against 
waste  is  by  setting  our  men  to  the  easiest,  and  therefore  the 
quickest,  work  which  will  answer  the  purpose.  Marble,  for 
instance,  lasts  quite  as  long  as  granite,  and  is  much  softer  to 
work ; therefore,  when  you  get  hold  of  a good  sculptor,  give 
him  marble  to  carve — not  granite.  That,  you  say,  is  obvious 
enough.  Yes;  but  it  is  not  so  obvious  how  much  of  your 


DISCOVERY  AND  APPLICATION. 


161 


workmen’s  time  you  waste  annually  in  making  them  cut  glass, 
after  it  has  got  hard,  when  you  ought  to  make  them  mould  it 
while  it  is  soft.  It  is  not  so  obvious  how  much  expense  you 
waste  in  cutting  diamonds  and  rubies,  which  are  the  hardest 
things  you  can  find,  into  shapes  that  mean  nothing,  when  the 
same  men  might  be  cutting  sandstone  and  freestone  into  shapes 
that  mean  something.  It  is  not  so  obvious  how  much  of  the 
artists’  time  in  Italy  you  waste,  by  forcing  them  to  make 
wretched  little  pictures  for  you  out  of  crumbs  of  stone  glued 
together  at  enormous  cost,  when  the  tenth  of  the  time  would 
make  good  and  noble  pictures  for  you  out  of  water-colour.  I 
could  go  on  giving  you  almost  numberless  instances  of  this 
great  commercial  mistake  ; but  I should  only  weary  and  con- 
fuse you.  I therefore  commend  also  this  head  of  our  subject 
to  your  own  meditation,  and  proceed  to  the  last  I named — the 
last  I shall  task  your  patience  with  to-night.  You  know  we 
are  now  considering  how  to  apply  our  genius ; and  we  were 
to  do  it  as  economists,  in  three  ways 
To  various  work ; 

To  easy  work  ; 

To  lasting  work. 

This  lasting  of  the  -work,  then,  is  our  final  question. 

Many  of  you  may,  perhaps,  remember  that  Michael  Angelo 
was  once  commanded  by  Pietro  di  Medici  to  mould  a statue 
out  of  snow,  and  that  he  obeyed  the  command.*  I am  glad, 
and  we  have  all  reason  to  be  glad,  that  such  a fancy  ever 
came  into  the  mind  of  the  unworthy  prince,  and  for  this 
cause : that  Pietro  di  Medici  then  gave,  at  the  period  of  one 
great  epoch  of  consummate  power  in  the  arts,  the  perfect,  ac- 
curate, and  intensest  possible  type  of  the  greatest  error  which 
nations  and  princes  can  commit,  respecting  the  power  of 
genius  entrusted  to  their  guidance.  You  had  there,  observe, 
the  strongest  genius  in  the  most  perfect  obedience  ; capable 
of  iron  independence,  yet  wholly  submissive  to  the  patron’s 
will ; at  once  the  most  highly  accomplished  and  the  most 
original,  capable  of  doing  as  much  as  man  could  do,  in  any 
direction  that  man  could  ask.  And  its  governor,  and  guide, 
* See  tlie  noble  passage  on  this  tradition  in  “Casa  Guidi  Windows.” 


162 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


and  patron  sets  it  to  build  a statue  in  snow — to  put  itself  into 
the  service  of  annihilation — to  make  a cloud  of  itself,  and  pass 
away  from  the  earth. 

Now  this,  so  precisely  and  completely  done  by  Pietro  di 
Medici,  is  what  we  are  all  doing,  exactly  in  the  degree  in 
which  wTe  direct  the  genius  under  our  patronage  to  work  in 
more  or  less  perishable  materials.  So  far  as  we  induce  paint- 
ers to  work  in  fading  colours,  or  architects  to  build  with  im- 
perfect structure,  or  in  any  other  way  consult  only  immediate 
ease  and  cheapness  in  the  production  of  what  we  want,  to  the 
exclusion  of  provident  thought  as  to  its  permanence  and  ser- 
viceableness in  after  ages  ; so  far  we  are  forcing  our  Michael 
Angelos  to  carve  in  snow.  The  first  duty  of  the  economist  in 
art  is,  to  see  that  no  intellect  shall  thus  glitter  merely  in  the 
manner  of  hoar-frost ; but  that  it  shall  be  well  vitrified,  like  a 
painted  window,  and  shall  be  set  so  between  shafts  of  stone 
and  bands  of  iron,  that  it  shall  bear  the  sunshine  upon  it,  and 
send  the  sunshine  through  it,  from  generation  to  generation. 

I can  conceive,  however,  some  political  economist  to  interrupt 
me  here,  and  say,  “If  you  make  your  art  -wear  too  well,  you 
will  soon  have  too  much  of  it ; you  will  throw  your  artists 
quite  out  of  work.  Better  allow  for  a little  wholesome  evan- 
escence— beneficent  destruction  : let  each  ago  provide  art  for 
itself,  or  wo  shall  soon  have  so  many  good  pictures  that  wo 
shall  not  know  what  to  do  with  them.” 

Remember,  my  dear  hearers,  who  are  thus  thinking,  that 
political  economy,  like  every  other  subject,  cannot  be  dealt 
with  effectively  if  wo  try  to  solve  two  questions  at  a time 
instead  of  one.  It  is  one  question,  how  to  get  plenty  of  a 
thing ; and  another,  whether  plenty  of  it  will  be  good  for  us. 
Consider  these  two  matters  separately ; never  confuse  your- 
self by  interweaving  one  with  the  other.  It  is  one  question, 
how  to  treat  your  fields  so  as  to  get  a good  harvest ; another, 
whether  you  wish  to  have  a good  harvest,  or  would  rather  like 
to  keep  up  the  price  of  corn.  It  is  one  question,  how  to  graft 
your  trees  so  as  to  grow  most  apples  ; and  quite  another, 
whether  having  such  a heap  of  apples  in  the  storeroom  will 
not  make  them  all  rot. 


DISCOVERY  AND  APPLICATION 


163 


Now,  therefore,  that  we  are  talking  only  about  grafting  and 
growing,  pray  do  not  vex  yourselves  with  thinking  what  you 
are  to  do  with  the  pippins.  It  may  be  desirable  for  us  to 
have  much  art,  or  little — we  will  examine  that  by  and  by  ; 
but  just  now,  let  us  keep  to  the  simple  consideration  how  to 
get  plenty  of  good  art  if  we  want  it.  Perhaps  it  might  be 
just  as  well  that  a man  of  moderate  income  should  be  able  to 
possess  a good  picture,  as  that  any  work  of  real  merit  should 
cost  500/.  or  1000/. ; at  all  events,  it  is  certainly  one  of  the 
branches  of  political  economy  to  ascertain  how,  if  we  like,  we 
can  get  things  in  quantities — plenty  of  corn,  plenty  of  wine, 
plenty  of  gold,  or  plenty  of  pictures. 

It  has  just  been  said,  that  the  first  great  secret  is  to  pro- 
duce work  that  will  last.  Now,  the  conditions  of  work  lasting 
are  twofold  : it  must  not  only  be  in  materials  that  will  last, 
but  it  must  be  itself  of  a quality  that  will  last — it  must  be 
good  enough  to  bear  the  test  of  time.  If  it  is  not  good,  we 
shall  tire  of  it  quickly,  and  throw  it  aside — we  shall  have  no 
pleasure  in  the  accumulation  of  it.  So  that  the  first  question 
of  a good  art-economist  respecting  any  work  is,  Will  it  lose  its 
flavour  by  keeping?  It  may  be  very  amusing  now,  and  look 
much  like  a work  of  genius.  But  what  will  be  its  value  a 
hundred  years  hence  ? 

You  cannot  always  ascertain  this.  You  may  get  what  you 
fancy  to  be  work  of  the  best  quality,  and  yet  find  to  your  as- 
tonishment that  it  won’t  keep.  But  of  one  thing  you  may  be 
sure,  that  art  which  is  produced  hastily  will  also  perish  hastily  ; 
and  that  what  is  cheapest  to  you  now,  is  likely  to  be  dearest 
in  the  end. 

I am  sorry  to  say,  the  great  tendency  of  this  age  is  to  ex- 
pend its  genius  in  perishable  art  of  this  kind,  as  if  it  were  a 
triumph  to  burn  its  thoughts  away  in  bonfires.  There  is  a 
vast  quantity  of  intellect  and  of  labour  consumed  annually  in 
our  cheap  illustrated  publications  ; you  triumph  in  them  ; and 
you  think  it  so  grand  a thing  to  get  so  many  woodcuts  for  a 
penny.  Why,  woodcuts,  penny  and  all,  are  as  much  lost  to 
you  as  if  you  had  invested  your  money  in  gossamer.  More 
lost,  for  the  gossamer  could  only  tickle  your  face,  and  glitter 


164 


A JOT  FOR  EVER. 


in  your  eyes  ; it  could  not  catch  your  feet  and  trip  you  up ; 
but  the  bad  art  can,  and  does ; for  you  can’t  like  good  wood- 
cuts  as  long  as  you  look  at  the  bad  ones.  If  we  were  at  this 
moment  to  come  across  a Titian  woodcut,  or  a Durer  wood- 
cut,  we  should  not  like  it — those  of  us  at  least  who  are  accus- 
tomed to  the  cheap  work  of  the  day.  We  don’t  like,  and  can’t 
like,  that  long  ; but  when  we  are  tired  of  one  bad  cheap  thing, 
we  throw  it  aside  and  buy  another  bad  cheap  thing ; and  so 
keep  looking  at  bad  things  all  our  lives.  Now,  the  very  men 
who  do  all  that  quick  bad  work  for  us  are  capable  of  doing 
perfect  work.  Only,  perfect  work  can’t  be  hurried,  and  there- 
fore it  can’t  be  cheap  beyond  a certain  point.  But  suppose  you 
pay  twelve  times  as  much  as  you  do  now,  and  you  have  one 
woodcut  for  a shilling  instead  of  twelve  ; and  the  one  woodcut 
for  a shilling  is  as  good  as  art  can  be,  so  that  you  will  never 
tire  of  looking  at  it  ; and  is  struck  on  good  paper  with  good 
ink,  so  that  you  will  never  wear  it  out  by  handling  it  ; while 
you  are  sick  of  your  penny  each  cuts  by  the  end  of  the  week 
and  have  torn  them  mostly  in  half  too.  Isn’t  your  shilling’s 
worth  the  best  bargain  ? 

It  is  not,  however,  only  in  getting  prints  or  woodcuts  of  the 
best  kind  that  you  will  practise  economy.  There  is  a certain 
quality  about  an  original  drawing  which  you  cannot  get  in  a 
woodcut,  and  the  best  part  of  the  genius  of  any  man  is  only 
expressible  in  original  work,  whether  with  pen  and  ink — pen- 
cil or  colours.  This  is  not  always  the  case  ; but  in  general 
the  best  men  are  those  who  can  only  express  themselves  on 
paper  or  canvas : and  you  will,  therefore,  in  the  long  run, 
get  most  for  your  money  by  buying  original  work  ; proceed- 
ing on  the  principle  already  laid  down,  that  the  best  is  likely 
to  be  the  cheapest  in  the  end.  Of  course,  original  work  can- 
not be  produced  under  a certain  cost.  - If  you  w’ant  a man  to 
make  you  a dravvdng  which  takes  him  six  days,  you  must,  at 
all  events,  keep  him  for  six  days  in  brekd  and  water,  fire  and 
lodging  ; that  is  the  lowest  price  at  which  he  can  do  it  for 
you,  but  that  is  not  very  dear  : and  the  best  bargain  which 
can  possibly  be  made  honestly  in  art — the  very  ideal  of  a 
cheap  purchase  to  the  purchaser — is  the  original  work  of  a 


DISCOVERY  AND  APPLICATION. 


165 


great  man  fed  for  as  many  days  as  are  necessary  on  bread  and 
water,  or  perhaps  we  may  say  with  as  many  onions  as  will 
keep  him  in  good  humour.  That  is  the  way  by  which  you 
will  always  get  most  for  your  money  ; no  mechanical  mul- 
tiplication or  ingenuity  of  commercial  arrangements  will  ever 
get  you  a better  penny’s  worth  of  art  than  that. 

Without,  however,  pushing  our  calculations  quite  to  this 
prison-discipline  extreme,  we  may  lay  it  down  as  a rule  in  art- 
economy,  that  original  work  is,  on  the  whole,  cheapest  and 
best  worth  having.  But  precisely  in  proportion  to  the  value 
of  it  as  a production,  becomes  the  importance  of  having  it 
executed  in  permanent  materials.  And  here  w~e  come  to  note 
the  second  main  error  of  the  day,  that  we  not  only  ask  our 
workmen  for  bad  art,  but  we  make  them  put  it  into  bad  sub- 
stance. We  have,  for  example,  put  a great  quantity  of  genius, 
within  the  last  twenty  years,  into  water-colour  drawing,  and 
we  have  done  this  with  the  most  reckless  disregard  whether 
either  the  colours  or  the  paper  will  stand.  In  most  instances, 
neither  will.  By  accident,  it  may  happen  that  the  colours  in 
a given  drawing  have  been  of  good  quality,  and  its  paper  un- 
injured by  chemical  processes.  But  you  take  not  the  least 
care  to  ensure  these  being  so  ; I have  myself  seen  the  most 
destructive  changes  take  place  in  water-colour  drawings  with- 
in twenty  years  after  they  were  painted  ; and  from  all  I can 
gather  respecting  the  recklessness  of  modern  paper  manufact- 
ure, my  belief  is,  that  though  you  may  still  handle  an  Albert 
Barer  engraving,  two  hundred  years  old,  fearlessly,  not  one- 
liaif  of  that  time  will  have  passed  over  your  modern  water- 
colours, before  most  of  them  will  be  reduced  to  mere  white 
or  brown  rags  ; and  your  descendants,  Witching  them  con- 
temptuously into  fragments  between  finger  and  thumb,  will 
mutter  against  you,  half- in  scorn  and  half  in  anger,  “ Those 
wretched  nineteenth  century  people  ! they  kept  vapouring  and 
fuming  about  the  wTorld,  doing  what  they  called  business,  and 
they  couldn’t  make  a sheet  of  paper  that  wasn’t  rotten.”  And 
note  that  this  is  no  unimportant  portion  of  your  art  economy 
at  this  time.  Your  water-colour  painters  are  becoming  every 
day  capable  of  expressing  greater  and  better  things ; and 


1 66 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


their  material  is  especially  adapted  to  tlie  turn  of  your  best 
artists’  minds.  The  value  which  you  could  accumulate  in 
work  of  this  kind  would  soon  become  a most  important  item 
in  the  national  art-wealth,  if  only  you  would  take  the  little 
pains  necessary  to  secure  its  permanence.  I am  inclined  to 
think,  myself,  that  water-colour  ought  not  to  be  used  on  paper 
at  all,  but  only  on  vellum,  and  then,  if  properly  taken  care  of, 
the  drawing  wouj^l  be  almost  imperishable.  Still,  paper  is  a 
much  more  convenient  material  for  rapid  work  ; and  it  is  an 
infinite  absurdity  not  to  secure  the  goodness  of  its  quality, 
when  we  could  do  so  without  the  slightest  trouble.  Among 
the  many  favours  which  I am  going  to  ask  from  our  paternal 
government  when  wre  get  it,  will  be  that  it  will  supply  its 
little  boys  with  good  paper.  You  have  nothing  to  do  but  to 
let  the  government  establish  a paper  manufactory,  under  the 
superintendence  of  any  of  our  leading  chemists,  who  should 
be  answerable  for  the  safety  and  completeness  of  all  the  pro- 
cesses of  the  manufacture.  The  government  stamp  on  the 
corner  of  your  sheet  of  drawing-paper,  made  in  the  perfect 
way,  should  cost  you  a shilling,  which  would  add  something 
to  the  revenue  ; and  when  you  bought  a water-colour  drawing 
for  fifty  or  a hundred  guineas,  you  would  have  merely  to  look 
in  the  corner  for  your  stamp,  and  pay  your  extra  shilling  for 
the  security  that  your  hundred  guineas  were  given  really  for 
a drawing,  and  not  for  a coloured  rag.  There  need  be  no 
monopoly  or  restriction  in  the  matter ; let  the  paper  manu- 
facturers compete  with  the  government,  and  if  people  like  to 
save  their  shilling,  and  take  their  chance,  let  them  ; only,  the 
artist  and  purchaser  might  then  be  sure  of  good  material,  if 
they  liked,  and  now  they  cannot  be. 

I should  like  also  to  have  a government  colour  manufactory  ; 
though  that  is  not  so  necessary,  as  the  quality  of  colour  is 
more  within  the  artist’s  power  of  testing,  and  I have  no  doubt 
that  any  painter  may  get  permanent  colour  from  the  respect- 
able manufacturers,  if  he  chooses.  I will  not  attempt  to  fol- 
low the  subject  out  at  all  as  it  respects  architecture,  and  our 
methods  of  modern  building ; respecting  which  I have  had 
occasion  to  speak  before  now. 


DISCOVERY  AND  APPLICATION. 


167 


But  I cannot  pass  without  some  brief  notice  our  habit — 
continually,  as  it  seems  to  me,  gaining  strength — of  putting 
a large  quantity  of  thought  and  work,  annually,  into  things 
which  are  either  in  their  nature  necessarily  perishable,  as 
dress  ; or  else  into  compliances  with  the  fashion  of  the  day, 
into  things  not  necessarily  perishable,  as  plate.  I am  afraid 
almost  the  first  idea  of  a young  rich  couple  setting  up  house 
in  London,  is,  that  they  must  have  new  plate.  Their  father’s 
plate  may  be  very  handsome,  but  the  fashion  is  changed, 
They  will  have  a new  service  from  the  leading  manufacturer, 
and  the  old  plate,  except  a few  apostle  spoons,  and  a cup 
which  Charles  the  Second  drank  a health  in  to  their  pretty  an- 
cestress, is  sent  to  be  melted  down,  and  made  up  with  new  flour- 
ishes and  fresh  lustre.  Now,  so  long  as  this  is  the  case — so 
long,  observe,  as  fashion  has  influence  on  the  manufacture  of 
plate — so  long  you  cannot  have  a goldsmith's  art  in  this  country. 
Do  you  suppose  any  workman  worthy  the  name  will  put  his 
brains  into  a cup  or  an  urn,  which  he  knows  is  to  go  to  the 
melting  pot  in  half  a score  years  ? He  will  not ; you  don’t 
ask  or  expect  it  of  him.  You  ask  of  him  nothing  but  a little 
quick  handicraft — a clever  twist  of  a handle  here,  and  a foot 
there,  a convolvulus  from  the  newest  school  of  design,  a 
pheasant  from  Landseer’s  game  cards  ; a couple  of  senti- 
mental figures  for  supporters,  in  the  style  of  the  signs  of  in- 
surance offices,  then  a clever  touch  with  the  burnisher,  and 
there’s  your  epergue,  the  admiration  of  all  the  footmen  at  the 
wTedding-breakfast,  and  the  torment  of  some  unfortunate 
youth  who  cannot  see  the  pretty  girl  opposite  to  him,  through 
its  tyrannous  branches. 

But  you  don’t  suppose  that  that’s  goldsmith’s  work  ? Gold- 
smith’s work  is  made  to  last,  and  made  with  the  men’s  whole 
heart  and  soul  in  it ; true  goldsmith’s  work,  when  it  exists,  is 
generally  the  means  of  education  of  the  greatest  painters  and 
sculptors  of  the  day.  Francia  was  a goldsmith  ; Francia  was 
not  his  own  name,  but  that  of  his  master,  the  jeweller  ; and 
he  signed  his  pictures  almost  always,  “ Francia,  the  gold- 
smith,” for  love  of  his  master ; Ghirlandajo  w^as  a goldsmith, 
and  was  the  master  of  Michael  Angelo  ; Verrocchio  was  a 


168 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


goldsmith,  and  was  the  master  of  Leonardo  da  Vinci.  Ghi- 
berti was  a goldsmith,  and  beat  out  the  bronze  gates  which 
Michael  Angelo  said  might  serve  for  gates  of  Paradise.*  But 
if  ever  you  want  work  like  theirs  again,  you  must  keep  it, 
though  it  should  have  the  misfortune  to  become  old  fashioned. 
You  must  not  break  it  up,  nor  melt  it  any  more.  There  is  no 
economy  in  that ; you  could  not  easily  waste  intellect  more 
grievously.  Nature  may  melt  her  goldsmith’s  work  at  every 
sunset  if  she  chooses ; and  beat  it  out  into  chased  bars  again 
at  every  sunrise  ; but  you  must  not.  The  way  to  have  a 
truly  noble  service  of  plate,  is  to  keep  adding  to  it,  not  melt- 
ing it.  At  every  marriage,  and  at  every  birth,  get  a new 
piece  of  gold  or  silver  if  you  will,  but  with  noble  workman- 
ship on  it,  done  for  all  time,  and  put  it  among  your  treas- 
ures ; that  is  one  of  the  chief  things  which  gold  was  made  for, 
and  made  incorruptible  for.  When  we  know  a little  more  of 
political  economy,  we  shall  find  that  none  but  partially  savage 
nations  need,  imperatively,  gold  for  their  currency  ; f but  gold 
has  been  given  us,  among  other  things,  that  we  might  put 
beautiful  work  into  its  imperishable  splendour,  and  that  the 
artists  who  have  the  most  wilful  fancies  may  have  a material 
which  will  drag  out,  and  beat  out,  as  their  dreams  require,  and 
will  hold  itself  together  with  fantastic  tenacity,  whatever  rare 
and  delicate  service  they  set  it  upon. 

So  here  is  one  branch  of  decorative  art  in  which  rich  people 
may  indulge  themselves  unselfishly  ; if  they  ask  for  good  art 
in  it,  they  may  be  sure  in  buying  gold  and  silver  plate  that 
they  are  enforcing  useful  education  on  young  artists.  But 
there  is  another  branch  of  decorative  art  in  which  I am  sorry 

* Several  reasons  may  account  for  the  fact  that  goldsmith’s  work  is  so 
wholesome  for  young  artists  ; first,  that  it  gives  great  firmness  of  hand 
to  deal  for  some  time  with  a solid  substance  ; again,  that  it  induces  cau- 
tion and  steadiness — a boy  trusted  with  chalk  and  paper  suffers  an  im- 
mediate temptation  to  scrawl  upon  it  and  play  with  it,  but  he  dares  not 
scrawl  on  gold,  and  he  cannot  play  with  it ; and,  lastly,  that  it  gives 
great  delicacy  and  precision  of  touch  to  work  upon  minute  forms,  and 
to  aim  at  producing  richness  and  finish  of  design  correspondent  to  the 
preciousness  of  the  material. 

\ See  note  in  Addenda  on  the  nature  of  property. 


DISCOVERT  AND  APPLICATION. 


169 


to  say  we  cannot,  at  least  under  existing  circumstances,  in- 
dulge ourselves,  with  the  hope  of  doing  good  to  anybody,  I 
mean  the  great  and  subtle  art  of  dress. 

And  here  I must  interrupt  the  pursuit  of  our  subject  for  a 
moment  or  two,  in  order  to  state  one  of  the  principles  of 
political  economy,  which,  though  it  is,  I believe,  now  suffi- 
ciently understood  and  asserted  by  the  leading  masters  of  the 
science,  is  not  yet,  I grieve  to  say,  acted  upon  by  the  plurality 
of  those  who  have  the  management  of  riches.  Whenever  we 
spend  money,  we  of  course  set  people  to  work  : that  is  the 
meaning  of  spending  money  ; we  may,  indeed,  lose  it  without 
employing  anybody  ; but,  whenever  we  spend  it,  we  set  a 
number  of  people  to  work,  greater  or  less,  of  course,  accord- 
ing to  the  rate  of  wages,  but,  in  the  long  run,  proportioned 
to  the  sum  we  spend.  Well,  your  shallow  people,  because 
they  see  that  however  they  spend  money  they  are  always  em- 
ploying somebody,  and,  therefore,  doing  some  good,  think 
and  say  to  themselves,  that  it  is  all  one  how  they  spend  it— 
that  all  their  apparently  selfish  luxury  is,  in  reality,  unselfish, 
and  is  doing  just  as  much  good  as  if  they  gave  all  their  money 
away,  or  perhaps  more  good  ; and  I have  heard  foolish  people 
even  declare  it  as  a principle  of  political  economy,  that  who- 
ever invented  a new  want  * conferred  a good  on  the  com- 
munity. I have  not  words  strong  enough — at  least  I could 
not,  without  shocking  you,  use  the  words  which  would  be 
strong  enough — to  express  my  estimate  of  the  absurdity  and 
the  mischievousness  of  this  popular  fallacy.  So,  putting  a 
great  restraint  upon  myself,  and  using  no  hard  words,  I will 
simply  try  to  state  the  nature  of  it,  and  the  extent  of  its  in- 
fluence. 

Granted,  that  whenever  we  spend  money  for  whatever  pur- 
pose, we  set  people  to  work  ; and  passing  by,  for  the  moment, 
the  question  whether  the  work  we  set  them  to  is  all  equally 
healthy  and  good  for  them,  we  will  assume  that  whenever  we 
spend  a guinea  we  provide  an  equal  number  of  people  with 
healthy  maintenance  for  a given  time.  But,  by  the  way  in 
which  we  spend  it,  we  entirely  direct  the  labour  of  those  peo- 
* See  note  5th  in  Addenda. 


170 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


pie  during  that  given  time.  We  become  their  masters  of 
mistresses,  and  we  compel  them  to  produce,  within  a certain 
period,  a certain  article.  Now,  that  article  may  be  a useful 
and  lasting  one,  or  it  may  be  a useless  and  perishable  one — it 
may  be  one  useful  to  the  whole  community,  or  useful  only  to 
ourselves.  And  our  selfishness  and  folly,  or  our  virtue  and 
prudence,  are  shown,  not  by  our  spending  money,  but  by  our 
spending  it  for  the  wrong  or  the  right  thing  ; and  we  are 
wise  and  kind,  not  in  maintaining  a certain  number  of  people 
for  a given  period,  but  only  in  requiring  them  to  produce, 
during  that  period,  the  kind  of  things  which  shall  be  useful  to 
society,  instead  of  those  which  are  only  useful  to  ourselves. 

Thus,  for  instance  : if  you  are  a young  lady,  and  employ  a 
certain  number  of  sempstresses  for  a given  time,  in  making  a 
given  number  of  simple  and  serviceable  dresses,  suppose, 
seven  ; of  which  you  can  wear  one  yourself  for  half  the  winter, 
and  give  six  away  to  poor  girls  who  have  none,  you  are  spend- 
ing  your  money  unselfishly.  But  if  you  employ  the  same 
number  of  sempstresses  for  the  same  number  of  days,  in 
making  four,  or  five,  or  six  beautiful  flounces  for  your  owrn 
ball-dress — flounces  which  will  clothe  no  one  but  yourself, 
and  which  you  will  yourself  be  unable  to  wear  at  more  than 
one  ball — you  are  employing  your  money  selfishly.  You  have 
maintained,  indeed,  in  each  case,  the  same  number  of  people  ; 
but  in  the  one  case  you  have  directed  their  labour  to  the  ser- 
vice of  the  community  ; in  the  other  case  you  have  consumed 
it  wholly  upon  yourself.  I don’t  say  you  are  never  to  do  so  ; 
I don’t  say  you  ought  not  sometimes  to  think  of  yourselves 
only,  and  to  make  yourselves  as  pretty  as  you  can  ; only  do 
not  confuse  coquettishness  with  benevolence,  nor  cheat  your- 
selves into  thinking  that  all  the  finery  you  can  wear  is  so 
much  put  into  the  hungry  mouths  of  those  beneath  you : it  is 
not  so  ; it  is  what  you  yourselves,  whether  you  wall  or  no, 
must  sometimes  instinctively  feel  it  to  be — it  is  what  those 
who  stand  shivering  in  the  streets,  forming  a line  to  watch 
you  as  you  step  out  of  your  carriages,  Jcnoiu  it  to  be  ; those 
fine  dresses  do  not  mean  that  so  much  has  been  put  into 
their  mouths,  but  that  so  much  has  been  taken  out  of  their 


DISCOVERY  AND  APPLICATION 


171 


mouths.  The  real  politico-economical  signification  of  every 
one  of  those  beautiful  toilettes,  is  just  this  ; that  you  have 
had  a certain  number  of  people  put  for  a certain  number  of 
days  wholly  under  your  authority,  by  the  sternest  of  slave- 
masters, — hunger  and  cold  ; and  you  have  said  to  them,  “ I 
will  feed  you,  indeed,  and  clothe  you,  and  give  you  fuel  for  so 
many  days  ; but  during  those  days  you  shall  work  for  me 
only  : your  little  brothers  need  clothes,  but  you  shall  make 
none  for  them  : your  sick  friend  needs  clothes,  but  you  shall 
make  none  for  her : you  yourself  will  soon  need  another,  and 
a warmer  dress  ; but  you  shall  make  none  for  yourself.  You 
shall  make  nothing  but  lace  and  roses  for  me ; for  this  fort- 
night to  come,  you  shall  work  at  the  patterns  and  petals,  and 
then  I will  crush  and  consume  them  away  in  an  hour.”  You 
will  perhaps  answer — “ It  may  not  be  particularly  benevolent 
to  do  this,  and  we  won’t  call  it  so  ; but  at  any  rate  we  do  no 
wrong  in  taking  their  labour  when  we  pay  them  their  wages  : 
if  we  pay  for  their  work  we  have  a right  to  it.”  No  ; — a thou- 
sand times  no.  The  labour  which  you  have  paid  for,  does  in- 
deed become,  by  the  act  of  purchase,  your  own  labour  : you 
have  bought  the  hands  and  the  time  of  those  workers  ; they 
are,  by  right  and  justice,  your  own  hands,  your  own  time. 
But,  have  you  a right  to  spend  your  own  time,  to  work  with 
your  own  hands,  only  for  your  own  advantage  ? — much  more, 
when,  by  purchase,  you  have  invested  your  own  person  with 
the  strength  of  others  ; and  added  to  your  own  life,  a part  of 
the  life  of  others  ? You  may,  indeed,  to  a certain  extent,  use 
their  labour  for  your  delight ; remember,  I am  making  no 
general  assertions  against  splendour  of  dress,  or  pomp  of  ac- 
cessories of  life  ; on  the  contrary,  there  are  many  reasons  for 
thinking  that  we  do  not  at  present  attach  enough  importance 
to  beautiful  dress,  as  one  of  the  means  of  influencing  general 
taste  and  character.  But  I clo  say,  that  you  must  weigh  the 
value  of  what  you  ask  these  workers  to  produce  for  you  in  its 
own  distinct  balance  ; that  on  its  own  worthiness  or  desirable- 
ness rests  the  question  of  your  kindness,  and  not  merely  on 
the  fact  of  your  having  employed  people  in  producing  it  : and 
I say  farther,  that  as  long  as  there  are  cold  and  nakedness  in 


172 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


the  land  around  you,  so  long  there  can  be  no  question  at  ah 
but  that  splendour  of  dress  is  a crime.  In  due  time,  when 
we  have  nothing  better  to  set  people  to  work  at,  it  may  be 
right  to  let  them  make  lace  and  cut  jewels  ; but,  as  long  as 
there  are  any  who  have  no  blankets  for  their  beds,  and  no 
rags  for  their  bodies,  so  long  it  is  blanket-making  and  tailor- 
ing we  must  set  people  to  wTork  at — not  lace. 

And  it  would  be  strange,  if  at  any  great  assembly  which, 
while  it  dazzled  the  young  and  the  thoughtless,  beguiled  the 
gentler  hearts  that  beat  beneath  the  embroidery,  with  a placid 
sensation  of  luxurious  benevolence — as  if  by  all  that  they  wore 
in  waywardness  of  beauty,  comfort  had  been  first  given  to  the 
distressed,  and  aid  to  the  indigent ; it  would  be  strange,  I say, 
if,  for  a moment,  the  spirits  of  Truth  and  of  Terror,  -which 
walk  invisibly  among  the  masques  of  the  earth,  would  lift  the 
dimness  from  our  erring  thoughts,  and  show  us  how — inas- 
much as  the  sums  exhausted  for  that  magnificence  would 
have  given  back  the  failing  breath  to  many  an  unsheltered 
outcast  on  moor  and  street — they  who  wear  it  have  literally 
entered  into  partnership  with  Death  ; and  dressed  themselves 
in  his  spoils.  Yes,  if  the  veil  could  be  lifted  not  only  from 
your  thoughts,  but  from  your  human  sight,  you  would  see — the 
angels  do  see — on  those  gay  white  dresses  of  yours,  strange 
dark  spots,  and  crimson  patterns  that  you  knew  not  of — spots 
of  the  inextinguishable  red  that  all  the  seas  cannot  wash  away  ; 
yes,  and  among  the  pleasant  flowers  that  crown  your  fair  heads, 
and  glow  on  your  wreathed  hair,  you  would  see  that  one  weed 
was  always  twisted  which  no  one  thought  of — the  grass  that 
grows  ou  graves. 

It  was  not,  however,  this  last,  this  clearest  and  most  appal- 
ling view  of  our  subject,  that  I intended  to  ask  you  to  take 
this  evening  ; only  it  is  impossible  to  set  any  part  of  the  mat- 
ter in  its  true  light,  until  we  go  to  the  root  of  it.  But  the 
point  which  it  is  our  special  business  to  consider  is,  not 
whether  costliness  of  dress  is  contrary  to  charity  ; but  whether 
it  is  not  contrary  to  mere  worldly  wisdom  : whether,  even 
supposing  we  knew  that  splendour  of  dress  did  not  cost  suf- 
fering or  hunger,  we  might  not  put  the  splendour  better  iz? 


DISCOVERY  AND  APPLICATION. 


173 


other  things  than  dress.  And,  supposing  our  mode  of  dress 
were  really  graceful  or  beautiful,  this  might  be  a very  doubt- 
ful question  ; for  I believe  true  nobleness  of  dress  to  be  an 
important  means  of  education,  as  it  certainly  is  a necessity  to 
any  nation  which  wishes  to  possess  living  art,  concerned  with 
portraiture  of  human  nature.  No  good  historical  painting 
ever  yet  existed,  or  ever  can  exist,  where  the  dresses  of  the 
people  of  the  time  are  not  beautiful : and  had  it  not  been  for 
the  lovely  and  fantastic  dressing  of  the  13tli  to  the  16th  cen- 
turies, neither  French,  nor  Florentine,  nor  Venetian  art  could 
have  risen  to  anything  like  the  rank  it  reached.  Still,  even 
then,  the  best  dressing  was  never  the  costliest ; and  its  effect 
depended  much  more  on  its  beautiful  and,  in  early  times 
modest,  arrangement,  and  on  the  simple  and  lovely  masses  of 
its  colour,  than  on  gorgeousness  of  clasp  or  embroidery. 
Whether  we  can  ever  return  to  any  of  those  more  perfect 
types  of  form  is  questionable  ; but  there  can  be  no  question, 
that  all  the  money  we  spend  on  the  forms  of  dress  at  present 
worn,  is,  so  far  as  any  good  purpose  is  concerned,  wholly  lost. 
Mind,  in  saying  this,  I reckon  among  good  purposes  the  pur- 
pose which  young  ladies  are  said  sometimes  to  entertain  — of 
being  married  ; but  they  would  be  married  quite  as  soon 
(and  probably  to  wiser  and  better  husbands)  by  dressing 
quietly  as  by  dressing  brilliantly  ; and  I believe  it  would  only 
be  needed  to  lay  fairly  and  largely  before  them  the  real  good 
which  might  be  effected  by  the  sums  they  spend  in  toilettes, 
to  make  them  trust  at  once  only  to  their  bright  eyes  and 
braided  hair  for  all  the  mischief  they  have  a mind  to.  I wish 
we  could,  for  once,  get  the  statistics  of  a London  season. 
There  was  much  complaining  talk  in  Parliament  last  week  of 
the  vast  sum  the  nation  has  given  for  the  best  Paul  Veronese 
in  Venice — £14,000  : I wonder  what  the  nation  meanwhile 
has  given  for  its  ball-dresses ! Suppose  we  could  see  the 
London  milliners’  bills,  simply  for  unnecessary  breadths  of 
slip  and  flounces,  from  April  to  July  ; I wonder  whether 
£14,000  would  cover  them.  But  the  breadths  of  slip  and 
flounces  are  by  this  time  as  much  lost  and  vanished  as  last 
year’s  snow ; only  they  have  done  less  good  : but  the  Paul 


174 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


Veronese  will  last  for  centuries,  if  we  take  care  of  it  ; and  yet 
we  grumble  at  the  price  given  for  the  jjainting,  while  no  one 
grumbles  at  the  price  of  pride. 

Time  does  not  permit  me  to  go  into  any  farther  illustration 
of  the  various  modes  in  which  we  build  our  statue  out  of  snow, 
and  waste  our  labour  on  things  that  vanish.  I must  leave 
you  to  follow  out  the  subject  for  yourselves,  as  I said  I should, 
and  proceed,  in  our  next  lecture,  to  examine  the  two  other 
branches  of  our  subject,  namely,  how  to  accumulate  our  art, 
and  how  to  distribute  it.  But,  in  closing,  as  we  have  been 
much  on  the  topic  of  good  government,  both  of  ourselves  and 
others,  let  me  just  give  you  one  more  illustration  of  what  it 
means,  from  that  old  art  of  which,  next  evening,  I shall  try 
to  convince  you  that  the  value,  both  moral  and  mercantile,  is 
greater  than  we  usually  suppose. 

One  of  the  frescoes  by  Ambrozio  Lorenzetti,  in  the  town- 
hall  of  Siena,  represents,  by  means  of  symbolical  figures,  the 
principles  of  Good  Civic  Government  and  of  Good  Govern- 
ment in  general.  The  figure  representing  this  noble  Civic  Gov- 
ernment is  enthroned,  and  surrounded  by  figures  represent- 
ing the  Virtues,  variously  supporting  or  administering  its 
authority.  Now,  observe  what  work  is  given  to  each  of  these 
virtues.  Three  winged  ones — Faith,  Hope,  and  Charity — sur- 
rounded the  head  of  the  figure,  not  in  mere  compliance  with 
the  common  and  heraldic  laws  of  precedence  among  Virtues, 
such  as  we  moderns  observe  habitually,  but  with  peculiar 
purpose  on  the  part  of  the  painter.  Faith,  as  thus  repre- 
sented, ruling  the  thoughts  of  the  Good  Governor,  does  not 
mean  merely  religious  faith,  understood  in  those  times  to  be 
necessary  to  all  persons — governed  no  less  than  governors — 
but  it  means  the  faith  which  enables  work  to  be  carried  out 
steadily,  in  spite  of  adverse  appearances  and  expediences  ; the 
faith  in  great  principles,  by  "which  a civic  ruler  looks  past  all 
the  immediate  checks  and  shadows  that  "would  daunt  a com- 
mon man,  knowing  that  what  is  rightly  done  will  have  a right 
issue,  and  holding  his  way  in  spite  of  pullings  at  his  cloak  and 
whisperings  in  his  ear,  enduring,  as  having  in  him  a faith 
which  is  evidence  of  things  unseen.  And  Hope,  in  like  man- 


DISCOVERY  AND  APPLICATION. 


175 


ner,  is  here  not  the  heavenward  hope  which  ought  to  ani- 
mate the  hearts  of  all  men  ; hut  she  attends  upon  Good  Gov- 
ernment, to  show  that  all  such  government  is  expectant  as  well 
as  conservative  ; that  if  it  ceases  to  he  hopeful  of  better  things, 
it  ceases  to  he  a wise  guardian  of  present  things  : that  it 
ought  never,  as  long  as  the  world  lasts,  to  he  wholly  content 
with  any  existing  state  of  institution  or  possession,  but  to  be 
hopeful  still  of  more  wisdom  and  powder  ; not  clutching  at  it 
restlessly  or  hastily,  hut  feeling  that  its  real  life  consists  in 
steady  ascent  from  high  to  higher  : conservative,  indeed,  and 
jealously  conservative  of  old  things,  hut  conservative  of  them 
as  pillars  not  as  pinnacles — as  aids,  hut  not  as  Idols  ; and 
hopeful  chiefly,  and  active,  in  times  of  national  trial  or  dis- 
tress, according  to  those  first  and  notable  words  describing 
the  queenly  nation.  “ She  riseth,  while  it  is  yet  night.”  And 
again,  the  winged  Charity  which  is  attendant  on  Good  Gov- 
ernment has,  in  this  fresco,  a peculiar  office.  Can  you  guess 
wrhat  ? If  you  consider  the  character  of  contest  which  so  often 
takes  place  among  kings  for  their  crowns,  and  the  selfish  and 
tyrannous  means  they  commonly  take  to  aggrandize  or  secure 
their  povrer,  you  will,  perhaps,  he  surprised  to  hear  that  the 
office  of  Charity  is  to  crown  the  King.  And  yet,  if  you  think 
of  it  a little,  you  will  see  the  beauty  of  the  thought  which  sets 
her  in  this  function  : since  in  the  first  place,  all  the  authority 
of  a good  governor  should  he  desired  hv  him  only  for  the 
good  of  his  people,  so  that  it  is  only  Love  that  makes  him  ac- 
cept or  guard  his  crown  : in  the  second  place,  his  chief  great- 
ness consists  in  the  exercise  of  this  love,  and  he  is  truly  to  he 
revered  only  so  far  as  his  acts  and  thoughts  are  those  of  kind- 
ness ; so  that  Love  is  the  light  of  his  crowm,  as  well  as  the 
giver  of  it : lastly,  because  his  strength  depends  on  the  affec- 
tions of  his  people,  and  it  is  only  their  love  which  can  securely 
crown  him,  and  for  ever.  So  that  Love  is  the  strength  of  his 
crown  as  well  as  the  light  of  it. 

Then,  surrounding  the  King,  or  in  various  obedience  to 
him,  appear  the  dependent  virtues,  as  Fortitude,  Temperance, 
Truth,  and  other  attendant  spirits,  of  all  which  I cannot  now 
give  account,  wishing  you  only  to  notice  the  one  to  whom  are  en< 


176 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


trusted  the  guidance  and  administration  of  the  public  revenues. 
Can  you  guess  which  it  is  likely  to  be  ? Charity,  you  would 
have  thought,  should  have  something  to  do  with  the  business  ; 
but  not  so,  for  she  is  too  hot  to  attend  carefully  to  it.  Pru- 
dence, perhaps,  you  think  of  in  the  next  place.  No,  she  is 
too  timid,  and  loses  opportunities  in  making  up  her  mind. 
Can  it  be  Liberality  then  ? No  : Liberality  is  entrusted  with 
some  small  sums  ; but  she  is  a bad  accountant,  and  is  allowed 
no  important  place  in  the  exchequer.  But  the  treasures  are 
given  in  charge  to  a virtue  of  which  we  hear  too  little  in  mod- 
ern times,  as  distinct  from  others ; Magnanimity  : largeness 
of  heart : not  softness  or  weakness  of  heart,  mind  you — but 
capacity  of  heart — the  great  measuring  virtue,  which  weighs 
in  heavenly  balances  all  that  may  be  given,  and  all  that  may 
be  gained  ; and  sees  how  to  do  noblest  things  in  noblest 
ways  : which  of  two  goods  comprehends  and  therefore  chooses 
the  greatest ; which  of  two  personal  sacrifices  dares  and  ac- 
cepts the  largest : which,  out  of  the  avenues  of  beneficence, 
treads  always  that  which  opens  farthest  into  the  blue  fields  of 
futurity : that  character,  in  fine,  which,  in  those  words  taken  by 
us  at  first  for  the  description  of  a Queen  among  the  nations, 
looks  less  to  the  present  power  than  to  the  distant  promise  ; 
“ Strength  and  honour  are  in  her  clothing, — and  she  shall  re- 
joice IN  TIME  TO  COME.” 


LECTUBE  II. 

THE  ACCUMULATION  AND  DISTRIBUTION  OF  ART. 

Continuation  of  the  previous  Lecture  ; delivered  July  13,  1857. 

The  heads  of  our  subject  which  remain  for  our  considera- 
tion this  evening  are,  you  will  remember,  the  accumulation 
and  the  distribution  of  works  of  art.  Our  complete  inquiry 
fell  into  four  divisions — first,  how  to  get  our  genius  ; then, 
how  to  apply  our  genius  ; then,  how  to  accumulate  its  results  \ 
and  lastly,  how  to  distribute  them.  We  considered,  last  even- 


ACCUMULATION  AND  DISTRIBUTION. 


177 


ing,  how  to  discover  and  apply  it ; — we  have  to-night  to  ex- 
amine the  modes  of  its  preservation  and  distribution. 

And  now,  in  the  outset,  it  will  be  well  to  face  that  objection 
which  we  put  aside  a little  while  ago  ; namely,  that  perhaps 
it  is  not  well  to  have  a great  deal  of  good  art ; and  that  it 
should  not  be  made  too  cheap. 

“ Nay,”  I can  imagine  some  of  the  more  generous  among 
you,  exclaiming,  “ we  will  not  trouble  you  to  disprove  that 
objection ; of  course  it  is  a selfish  and  base  one : good  art, 
as  well  as  other  good  things,  ought  to  be  made  as  cheap  as 
possible,  and  put  as  far  as  we  can  within  the  reach  of  every- 
body.” 

Pardon  me,  I am  not  prepared  to  admit  that.  I rather  side 
with  the  selfish  objectors,  and  believe  that  art  ought  not  to  be 
made  cheap,  beyond  a certain  point  ; for  the  amount  of  pleas- 
ure that  you  can  receive  from  any  great  work,  depends  wholly 
on  the  quantity  of  attention  and  energy  of  mind  you  can  bring 
to  bear  upon  it.  Now,  that  attention  and  energy  depend  much 
more  on  the  freshness  of  the  thing  than  you  would  at  all  sup- 
pose ; unless  you  very  carefully  studied  the  movements  of 
your  own  minds.  If  you  see  things  of  the  same  kind  and  of 
equal  value  very  frequently,  your  reverence  for  them  is  infalli- 
bly diminished,  your  powers  of  attention  get  gradually  wearied, 
and  your  interest  and  enthusiasm  worn  out  ; and  you  cannot 
in  that  state  bring  to  any  given  work  the  energy  necessary  to 
enjoy  it.  If,  indeed,  the  question  were  only  between  enjoy- 
ing a great  many  pictures  each  a little,  or  one  picture  very 
much,  the  sum  of  enjoyment  being  in  each  case  the  same,  you 
might  rationally  desire  to  possess  rather  the  larger  quantity, 
than  the  small ; both  because  one  work  of  art  always  in  some 
sort  illustrates  another,  and  because  quantity  diminishes  the 
chances  of  destruction.  But  the  question  is  not  a merely 
arithmetical  one  of  this  kind.  Your  fragments  of  broken  ad- 
mirations will  not,  when  they  are  put  together,  make  up  one 
whole  admiration  ; two  and  two,  in  this  case,  do  not  make 
four,  nor  anything  like  four.  Your  good  picture,  or  book,  or 
work  of  art  of  any  kind,  is  always  in  some  degree  fenced  and 
closed  about  with  difficulty.  You  may  think  of  it  as  of  a kind 


178 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


of  cocoa-nut,  with  very  often  rather  an  unseemly  shell,  but 
good  milk  and  kernel  inside.  Now,  if  you  possess  twenty 
cocoa-nuts,  and  being  thirsty,  go  impatiently  from  one  to  the 
other,  giving  only  a single  scratch  with  the  point  of  your 
knife  to  the  shell  of  each,  you  will  get  no  milk  from  all  the 
twenty.  But  if  you  leave  nineteen  of  them  alone,  and  give 
twenty  cuts  to  the  shell  of  one,  you  will  get  through  it,  and  at 
the  milk  of  it.  And  the  tendency  of  the  human  mind  is  al- 
ways to  get  tired  before  it  has  made  its  twenty  cuts  ; and  to 
try  another  nut  ; and  moreover,  even  if  it  has  perseverance 
enough  to  crack  its  nuts,  it  is  sure  to  try  to  eat  too  many, 
and  so  choke  itself.  Hence,  it  is  wisely  appointed  for  us  that 
few  of  the  things  wTe  desire  can  be  had  without  considerable 
labour,  and  at  considerable  intervals  of  time.  We  cannot 
generally  get  our  dinner  without  working  for  it,  and  that  gives 
us  appetite  for  it  ; we  cannot  get  our  holiday  without  waiting 
for  it,  and  that  gives  us  zest  for  it ; and  we  ought  not  to  get 
our  picture  without  paying  for  it,  and  that  gives  us  a mind  to 
look  at  it.  Nay,  I will  even  go  so  far  as  to  say,  that  we  ought 
not  to  get  books  too  cheaply.  No  book,  I believe,  is  ever  worth 
half  so  much  to  its  reader  as  one  that  has  been  coveted  for  a 
year  at  a bookstall,  and  bought  out  of  saved  half-pence  ; and 
perhaps  a day  or  two’s  fasting.  That’s  the  wTay  to  get  at  the 
cream  of  a book.  And  I should  say  more  on  this  matter,  and 
protest  as  energetically  as  I could  against  the  plague  of  cheap 
literature,  with  which  wTe  are  just  now  afflicted,  but  that  I fear 
your  calling  me  to  order,  as  being  unpractical,  because  I don’t 
quite  see  my  way  at  present  to  making  everybody  fast  for  their 
books.  But  one  may  see  that  a thing  is  desirable  and  possi- 
ble, even  though  one  may  not  at  once  know  the  best  wray  to 
it — and  in  my  island  of  Barataria,  when  I get  it  wrell  into 
order,  I assure  you  no  book  shall  be  sold  for  less  than  a pound 
sterling  ; if  it  can  be  published  cheaper  than  that,  the  surplus 
shall  all  go  into  my  treasury,  and  save  my  subjects  taxation  in 
other  directions  ; only  people  realty  poor,  who  cannot  pay  the 
pound,  shall  be  supplied  with  the  books  they  wrant  for  noth- 
ing, in  a certain  limited  quantity.  I haven’t  made  up  my 
mind  about  the  number  yet,  and  there  are  several  other  points 


ACCUMULATION  AND  DISTRIBUTION . 


170 


in  the  system  yet  unsettled  ; when  they  are  all  determined,  if 
you  will  allow  me,  I will  come  and  give  you  another  lecture, 
on  the  political  economy  of  literature.* 

Meantime,  returning  to  our  immediate  subject,  I say  to  my 
generous  hearers,  who  want  to  shower  Titians  and  Turners 
upon  us,  like  falling  leaves,  “Pictures  ought  not  to  be  too 
cheap  ; ” but  in  much  stronger  tone  I would  say  to  those  who 
want  to  keep  up  the  prices  of  pictorial  property,  that  pictures 
ought  not  to  be  too  dear,  that  is  to  say,  not  as  dear  as  they 
are.  For,  as  matters  at  present  stand,  it  is  wholly  impossible 
for  any  man  in  the  ordinary  circumstances  of  English  life  to 
possess  himself  of  a piece  of  great  art.  * A modern  drawing  of 
average  merit,  or  a first-class  engraving  may  perhaps,  not 
without  some  self-reproach,  be  purchased  out  of  his  savings 
by  a man  of  narrow  income  ; but  a satisfactory  example  of 
first-rate  art — master-hands’  work — is  wholly  out  of  his  reach. 
And  we  are  so  accustomed  to  look  upon  this  as  the  natural 
course  and  necessity  of  things,  that  we  never  set  ourselves  in 
any  wise  to  diminish  the  evil ; and  yet  it  is  an  evil  perfectly 
capable  of  diminution.  It  is  an  evil  precisely  similar  in  kind 
to  that  which  existed  in  the  middle  ages,  respecting  good 
books,  and  which  everybody  then,  I suppose,  thought  as  nat- 
ural as  we  do  now  our  small  supply  of  good  pictures.  You 
could  not  then  study  the  work  of  a great  historian,  or  great 
poet,  any  more  than  you  can  now  study  that  of  a great  painter, 
but  at  heavy  cost.  If  you  wanted  a book,  you  had  to  get  it 
written  out  for  you,  or  to  write  it  out  for  yourself.  But  print- 
ing came,  and  the  poor  man  may  read  his  Dante  and  his 
Homer ; and  Dante  and  Homer  are  none  the  worse  for  that. 
But  it  is  only  in  literature  that  private  persons  of  moderate 
fortune  can  possess  and  study  greatness : they  can  study  at 
home  no  greatness  in  art ; and  the  object  of  that  accumula- 
tion which  we  are  at  present  aiming  at,  as  our  third  object  in 
political  economy,  is  to  bring  great  art  in  some  degree  within 
the  reach  of  the  multitude  ; and,  both  in  larger  and  more 
numerous  galleries  than  we  now  possess,  and  by  distribution, 
according  to  his  wnalth  and  wish,  in  each  man’s  home,  to  ren* 


* See  note  6th  in  Addenda. 


180 


A JOT  FOP  EVER. 


tier  the  influence  of  art  somewhat  correspondent  in  extent  ta 
that  of  literature.  Here,  then,  is  the  subtle  balance  which 
your  economist  has  to  strike  : to  accumulate  so  much  art  as  to 
be  able  to  give  the  whole  nation  a supply  of  it,  according*  to 
its  need,  and  yet  to  regulate  its  distribution  so  that  there  shall 
be  no  glut  of  it,  nor  contempt. 

A difficult  balance,  indeed,  for  us  to  hold,  if  it  were  left 
merely  to  our  skill  to  poise  ; but  the  just  point  between  pov- 
erty and  profusion  has  been  fixed  for  us  accurately  by  the  wise 
laws  of  Providence.  If  you  carefully  watch  for  all  the  genius 
you  can  detect,  apply  it  to  good  service,  and  then  reverently 
preserve  what  it  produces,  you  will  never  have  too  little  art  ; 
and  if,  on  the  other  hand,  you  never  force  an  artist  to  work 
hurriedly,  for  daily  bread,  nor  imperfectly,  because  you  would 
rather  have  showy  works  than  complete  ones,  you  will  never 
have  too  much.  Do  not  force  the  multiplication  of  art,  and 
you  will  not  have  it  too  cheap  ; do  not  wantonly  destroy  it, 
and  you  will  not  have  it  too  dear. 

“ But  who  wantonly  destroys  it  ? ” you  will  ask.  Why,  we 
all  do.  Perhaps  you  thought,  when  I came  to  this  part  of  our 
subject,  corresponding  to  that  set  forth  in  our  housewife’s 
economy  by  the  “ keeping  her  embroidery  from  the  moth/5 
that  I was  going  to  tell  you  only  how  to  take  better  care  of 
pictures,  how  to  clean  them,  and  varnish  them,  and  where  to 
put  them  away  safely  when  you  went  out  of  town.  Ah,  not 
at  all.  The  utmost  I have  to  ask  of  you  is,  that  you  will  not 
pull  them  to  pieces,  and  trample  them  under  your  feet. 
“ What,”  you  will  say,  “ when  do  we  do  such  things  ? Haven’t 
we  built  a perfectly  beautiful  gallery  for  all  the  pictures  we 
have  to  take  care  of  ? ” Yes,  you  have,  for  the  pictures  which 
are  definitely  sent  to  Manchester  to  be  taken  care  of.  But 
there  are  quantities  of  pictures  out  of  Manchester  which  it  is 
your  business,  and  mine  too,  to  take  care  of  no  less  than  of 
these,  and  which  we  are  at  this  moment  employing  ourselves 
in  pulling  to  pieces  by  deputy.  I will  tell  you  what  they  are, 
and  where  they  are,  in  a minute  ; only  first  let  me  state  one 
more  of  those  main  principles  of  political  economy  on  which 
the  matter  hinges. 


ACCUMULATION  AND  DISTRIBUTION. 


181 


I must  begin  a little  apparently  wide  of  the  mark,  and  ask 
you  to  reflect  if  there  is  any  way  in  which  we  waste  money 
more  in  England,  than  in  building  fine  tombs  ? Our  respect 
for  the  dead,  when  they  are  j ust  dead,  is  something  wonder- 
ful, and  the  way  we  show  it  more  wnnderful  still  We  show 
it  with  black  feathers  and  black  horses ; we  show  it  with  black 
dresses  and  bright  heraldries  ; we  show  it  with  costly  obelisks 
and  sculptures  of  sorrow",  which  spoil  half  of  our  most  beau- 
tiful cathedrals.  We  show  it  with  frightful  gratings  and 
vaults,  and  lids  of  dismal  stone,  in  the  midst  of  the  quiet 
grass  ; and  last,  not  least,  we  show'  it  by  permitting  ourselves 
to  tell  any  number  of  lies  we  think  amiable  or  credible,  in  the 
epitaph.  This  feeling  is  common  to  the  poor  as  well  as  the 
rich  ; and  wTe  all  know  how  many  a poor  family  will  nearly  ruin 
themselves,  to  testify  their  respect  for  some  member  of  it  in 
his  coffin,  whom  they  never  much  cared  for  wrhen  he  was  out 
of  it ; and  how  often  it  happens  that  a poor  old  woman  will 
starve  herself  to  death,  in  order  that  she  may  be  respectably 
buried. 

Now",  this  being  one  of  the  most  complete  and  special  ways 
of  wasting  money  ; — no  money  being  less  productive  of  good, 
or  of  any  percentage  whatever,  than  that  which  we  shake 
away  from  the  ends  of  undertakers’  plumes — it  is  of  course 
the  duty  of  all  good  economists,  and  kind  persons,  to  prove 
and  proclaim  continually,  to  the  poor  as  wrell  as  the  rich,  that 
respect  for  the  dead  is  not  really  shown  by  laying  great  stones 
on  them  to  tell  us  where  they  are  laid  ; but  by  remembering 
where  they  are  laid  without  a stone  to  help  us  ; trusting  them 
to  the  sacred  grass  and  saddened  flowers  ; and  still  more,  that 
respect  and  love  are  shown  to  them,  not  by  great  monuments 
to  them  which  we  build  with  our  hands,  but  by  letting  the 
monuments  stand,  winch  they  built  with  their  own.  And  this 
is  the  point  now  in  question. 

Observe,  there  are  twro  great  reciprocal  duties  concerning 
industry,  constantly  to  be  exchanged  between  the  living  and 
the  dead.  We,  as  we  live  and  work,  are  to  be  always  thinking 
of  those  who  are  to  come  after  us  ; that  what  we  do  may  be 
serviceable,  as  far  as  wre  can  make  it  so,  to  them,  as  well  as  ta 


182 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


us.  Then,  when  we  die,  it  is  the  duty  of  those  who  come 
after  us  to  accept  this  work  of  ours  with  thanks  and  remem- 
brance, not  thrusting  it  aside  or  tearing  it  down  the  moment 
they  think  they  have  no  use  for  it.  And  each  generation  will 
only  be  happy  or  powerful  to  the  pitch  that  it  ought  to  be,  in 
fulfilling  these  two  duties  to  the  Past  and  the  Future.  Its 
own  work  will  never  be  rightly  done,  even  for  itself — nevei1 
good,  or  noble,  or  pleasurable  to  its  own  eyes — if  it  does  not 
prepare  it  also  for  the  eyes  of  generations  yet  to  come.  And 
its  own  possessions  will  never  be  enough  for  it,  and  its  own 
wisdom  never  enough  for  it,  unless  it  avails  itself  gratefully 
and  tenderly  of  the  treasures  and  the  wisdom  bequeathed  to  it 
by  its  ancestors. 

For,  be  assured,  that  all  the  best  things  and  treasures  of 
this  world  are  not  to  be  produced  by  each  generation  for  it- 
self ; but  we  are  all  intended,  not  to  carve  our  wrork  in  snow 
that  will  melt,  but  each  and  all  of  us  to  be  continually  rolling 
a great  white  gathering  snowball,  higher  and  higher — larger 
and  larger — along  the  Alps  of  human  power.  Thus  the 
science  of  nations  is  to  be  accumulative  from  father  to  son  : 
each  learning  a little  more  and  a little  more  ; each  receiving 
all  that  wras  known,  and  adding  its  own  gain  : the  history  and 
poetry  of  nations  are  to  be  accumulative  ; each  generation 
treasuring  the  history  and  the  songs  of  its  ancestors,  adding 
its  own  history  and  its  own  songs  ; and  the  art  of  nations  is 
to  be  accumulative,  just  as  science  and  history  are  ; the  'work 
of  living  men  not  superseding,  but  building  itself  upon  the 
work  of  the  past.  Nearly  every  great  and  intellectual  race  of 
the  world  has  produced,  at  every  period  of  its  career,  an  art 
with  some  peculiar  and  precious  character  about  it,  wholly 
unattainable  by  any  other  race,  and  at  any  other  time  ; and 
the  intention  of  Providence  concerning  that  art,  is  evidently 
that  it  should  all  grow  together  into  one  mighty  temple  ; the 
rough  stones  and  the  smooth  all  finding  their  place,  and  ris- 
ing, daj^  by  day,  in  richer  and  higher  pinnacles  to  heaven. 

Now,  just  fancy  what  a position  the  world,  considered  as 
one  great  workroom — one  great  factory  in  the  form  of  a globe 
- — would  have  been  in  by  this  time,  if  it  had  in  the  least  un* 


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183 


fierstood  this  duty,  or  been  capable  of  it.  Fancy  what  we 
should  have  had  around  us  now,  if,  instead  of  quarrelling  and 
fighting  over  their  work,  the  nations  had  aided  each  other  in 
their  work,  or  if  even  in  their  conquests,  instead  of  effacing 
the  memorials  of  those  they  succeeded  and  subdued,  they  had 
guarded  the  spoils  of  their  victories.  Fancy  what  Europe 
would  be  now,  if  the  delicate  statues  and  temples  of  the 
Greeks, — if  the  broad  roads  and  massy  walls  of  the  Romans, — 
if  the  noble  and  pathetic  architecture  of  the  middle  ages,  had 
not  been  ground  to  dust  by  mere  human  rage.  You  talk  of 
the  scythe  of  Time,  and  the  tooth  of  Time  : I tell  you  Time  is 
scytheless  and  toothless  ; it  is  we  who  gnaw  like  the  worm — • 
we  who  smite  like  the  scythe.  It  is  ourselves  who  abolish — 
ourselves  who  consume  : we  are  the  mildew,  and  the  flame, 
and  the  soul  of  man  is  to  its  own  work  as  the  moth,  that  frets 
when  it  cannot  fly,  and  as  the  hidden  flame  that  blasts  where 
it  cannot  illumine.  All  these  lost  treasures  of  human  intellect 
have  been  wholly  destroyed  by  human  industry  of  destruction  ; 
the  marble  would  have  stood  its  two  thousand  years  as  well  in 
the  polished  statue  as  in  the  Parian  cliff ; but  we  men  have 
ground  it  to  powder,  and  mixed  it  with  our  own  ashes.  The 
walls  and  the  ways  would  have  stood — it  is  we  who  have  left 
not  one  stone  upon  another,  and  restored  its  pathlessness  to 
the  desert ; the  great  cathedrals  of  old  religion  would  have 
stood — it  is  we  who  have  dashed  down  the  carved  work  with 
axes  and  hammers,  and  bid  the  mountain-grass  bloom  upon 
the  pavement,  and  the  sea-winds  chaunt  in  the  galleries. 

You  will  perhaps  think  all  this  was  somehow  necessary  for 
the  development  of  the  human  race.  I cannot  stay  now  to 
dispute  that,  though  I would  willingly  ; but  do  you  think  it 
is  still  necessary  for  that  development?  Do  you  think  that  in 
this  nineteenth  century  it  is  still  necessary  for  the  European 
nations  to  turn  all  the  places  where  their  principal  art-treas- 
ures are  into  battlefields  ? For  that  is  what  they  are  doing 
even  while  I speak  ; the  great  firm  of  the  world  is  managing 
its  business  at  this  moment,  just  as  it  has  done  in  past  times. 
Imagine  what  would  be  the  thriving  circumstances  of  a manu- 
facturer of  some  delicate  produce— suppose  glass,  or  china — 


184 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


in  whose  workshop  and  exhibition  rooms  ail  the  workmen  and 
clerks  began  fighting  at  least  once  a day,  first  blowing  oft  the 
steam,  and  breaking  all  the  machinery  they  could  reach  ; and 
then  making  fortresses  of  all  the  cupboards,  and  attacking 
and  defending  the  show-tables,  the  victorious  party  finally 
throwing  everything  they  could  get  hold  of  out  of  the  window, 
by  way  of  showing  their  triumph,  and  the  poor  manufacturer 
picking  up  and  putting  away  at  last  a cup  here  and  a handle 
there.  A fine  prosperous  business  that  would  be,  would  it 
not  ? and  yet  that  is  precisely  the  way  the  great  manufactur- 
ing firm  of  the  world  carries  on  its  business. 

It  has  so  arranged  its  political  squabbles  for  the  last  six  or 
seven  hundred  years,  that  no  one  of  them  could  be  fought  out 
but  in  the  midst  of  its  most  precious  art  ; and  it  so  arranges 
them  to  this  day.  For  example,  if  I were  asked  to  lay  my 
finger,  in  a map  of  the  world,  on  the  spot  of  the  world’s  sur- 
face which  contained  at  this  moment  the  most  singular  con- 
centration of  art-teaching  and  art-treasure,  I should  lay  it  on 
the  name  of  the  town  of  Verona.  Other  cities,  indeed,  con- 
tain more  works  of  carriageable  art,  but  none  contain  so  much 
of  the  glorious  local  art,  and  of  the  springs  and  sources  of  art, 
which  can  by  no  means  be  made  subjects  of  package  or  por- 
terage, nor,  I grieve  to  say,  of  salvage.  Verona  possesses,  in 
the  first  place,  not  the  largest,  but  the  most  perfect  and  intel- 
ligible Roman  amphitheatre  that  exists,  still  unbroken  in  cir- 
cle of  step,  and  strong  in  succession  of  vault  and  arch  : it  con- 
tains minor  Roman  monuments,  gateways,  theatres,  baths, 
wrecks  of  temples,  which  give  the  streets  of  its  suburbs  a char- 
acter of  antiquity  unexampled  elsewhere,  except  in  Rome  it- 
self. But  it  contains,  in  the  next  place,  what  Rome  does  not 
contain — perfect  examples  of  the  great  twelfth-century  Lom- 
bardic  architecture,  which  was  the  root  of  all  the  mediaeval 
art  of  Italy,  "without  "which  no  Giottos,  no  Angelicos,  no 
Raphaels  would  have  been  possible  ; it  contains  that  architect- 
ure, not  in  rude  forms,  but  in  the  most  perfect  and  loveliest 
types  it  ever  attained — contains  those,  not  in  ruins,  nor  in 
altered  and  hardly  decipherable  fragments,  but  in  churches 
perfect  from  porch  to  apse,  with  all  their  carving  fresh,  their 


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185 


pillars  firm,  their  joints  unloosened.  Besides  these,  it  includes 
examples  of  the  great  thirteenth  and  fourteenth-century  Gothic 
of  Italy,  not  merely  perfect,  but  elsewhere  unrivalled.  At  Borne, 
the  Korean — at  Pisa,  the  Lombard,  architecture  may  be  seen  in 
greater  or  in  equal  nobleness  ; but  not  at  Rome,  nor  Pisa,  nor 
Florence,  nor  in  any  city  of  the  world,  is  there  a great  medi- 
eval Gothic  like  the  Gothic  of  Verona.  Elsewhere,  it  is  either 
less  pure  in  type  or  less  lovely  in  completion  : only  at  Verona 
may  you  see  it  in  the  simplicity  of  its  youthful  power,  and  the 
tenderness  of  its  accomplished  beauty.  And  Verona  possesses, 
in  the  last  place,  the  loveliest  Renaissance  architecture  of 
Italy,  not  disturbed  by  pride,  nor  defiled  by  luxury,  but  ris- 
ing in  fair  fulfilment  of  domestic  service,  serenity  of  effortless 
grace,  and  modesty  of  home  seclusion  ; its  richest  work  given 
to  the  windows  that  open  on  the  narrowest  streets  and  most 
silent  gardens.  All  this  she  possesses,  in  the  midst  of  natural 
scenery  such  as  assuredly  exists  nowhere  else  in  the  habitable 
globe — a wild  Alpine  river  foaming  at  her  feet,  from  whose 
shores  the  rocks  rise  in  a great  crescent,  dark  with  cypress, 
and  misty  with  olive  : inimitably,  from  before  her  southern 
gates,  the  tufted  plains  of  Italy  sweep  and  fade  in  golden 
light  ; around  her,  north  and  west,  the  Alps  crowd  in  crested 
troops,  and  the  winds  of  Benacus  bear  to  her  the  coolness  of 
their  snows. 

And  this  is  the  city — such,  and  possessing  such  things  as 
these — at  whose  gates  the  decisive  battles  of  Italy  are  fought 
continually  : three  days  her  towers  trembled  with  the  echo 
of  the  cannon  of  Areola  ; heaped  pebbles  of  the  Mincio  divide 
her  fields  to  this  hour  with  lines  of  broken  rampart,  whence 
the  tide  of  war  roiled  back  to  Novara  ; and  now  on  that  cres- 
cent of  her  eastern  cliffs,  whence  the  full  moon  used  to  rise 
through  the  bars  of  the  cypresses  in  her  burning  summer 
twilights,  touching  with  soft  increase  of  silver  light  the  rosy 
marbles  of  her  balconies,  along  the  ridge  of  that  encompassing 
rock,  other  circles  are  increasing  now,  white  and  pale  ; walled 
towers  of  cruel  strength,  sable-spotted  with  cannon-courses. 
I tell  you,  I have  seen,  when  the  thunderclouds  came  down 
on  those  Italian  hills,  and  all  their  crags  were  dipped  in  the 


186 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


dark,  terrible  purple,  as  if  the  winepress  of  the  wrath  of  God 
had  stained  their  mountain-raiment — I have  seen  the  hail  fall 
in  Italy  till  the  forest  branches  stood  stripped  and  bare  as  if 
blasted  by  the  locust  ; but  the  white  hail  never  fell  from  those 
clouds  of  heaven  as  the  black  hail  will  fall  from  the  clouds  of 
hell,  if  ever  one  breath  of  Italian  life  stirs  again  in  the  streets 
of  Verona. 

Sad  as  you  will  feel  this  to  be,  I do  not  say  that  you  can 
directly  prevent  it ; you  cannot  drive  the  Austrians  out  of 
Italy,  nor  prevent  them  from  building  forts  where  they  choose, 
but  I do  say,*  that  you,  and  I,  and  all  of  us,  ought  to  be  both 
* The  reader  can  liardlv  hut  remember  Mrs.  Browning’s  beautiful  ap- 
peal for  Italy,  made  on  the  occasion  of  the  first  great  Exhibition  of  Art 
in  England  : — 

O Magi  of  the  east  and  of  the  west, 

Your  incense,  gold,  and  myrrh  are  excellent ! — 

What  gifts  for  Christ,  then,  bring  ye  with  the  rest  ? 

Your  hands  have  worked  well.  Is  your  courage  spent 
In  handwork  only  ? Have  you  nothing  best, 

Which  generous  souls  may  perfect  and  present, 

And  He  shall  thank  the  givers  for  ? no  light 
Of  teaching,  liberal  nations,  for  the  poor, 

Who  sit  in  darkness  when  it  is  not  night  ? 

Ho  cure  for  wicked  children  ? Christ, — no  cure, 

Ho  help  for  women,  sobbing  out  of  sight 
Because  men  made  the  laws  ? no  brothel-lure 
Burnt  out  by  popular  lightnings  ? Hast  thou  found 
Ho  remedy,  my  England,  for  such  woes  ? 

Ho  outlet,  Austria,  for  the  scourged  and  bound, 

Ho  call  back  for  the  exiled  ? no  repose, 

Russia,  for  knouted  Poles  worked  under  ground. 

And  gentle  ladies  bleached  among  the  snows  ? 

Ho  mercy  for  the  slave,  America? 

Ho  hope  for  Rome,  free  France,  chivalric  France  ? 

Alas,  great  nations  have  great  shames,  I say. 

Ho  pity,  O world  ! no  tender  utterance 
Of  benediction,  and  prayers  stretched  this  way 
For  poor  Italia,  baffled  by  mischance  ? 

O gracious  nations,  give  some  ear  to  me ! 

You  all  go  to  your  Fair,  and  I am  one 

Who  at  the  roadside  of  humanity 

Beseech  vpur  alms, — God’s  justice  to  be  dons. 

Bo  prosper  j 


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187 


acting  and  feeling  with  a full  knowledge  and  understanding 
of  these  things,  and  that,  without  trying  to  excite  revolutions 
or  weaken  governments,  we  may  give  our  own  thoughts  and 
help,  so  as  in  a measure  to  prevent  needless  destruction.  We 
should  do  this,  if  we  only  realized  the  thing  thoroughly.  You 
drive  out  day  by  day  through  your  own  pretty  suburbs,  and 
you  think  only  of  making,  with  what  money  you  have  to 
spare,  your  gateways  handsomer,  and  your  carriage-drives 
wider — and  your  drawing-rooms  more  splendid,  having  a 
vague  notion  that  you  are  all  the  while  patronizing  and  ad- 
vancing art,  and  you  make  no  effort  to  conceive  the  fact,  that 
within  a few  hours’  journey  of  you,  there  are  gateways  and 
drawing-rooms  which  might  just  as  well  be  yours  as  these,  all 
built  already ; gateways  built  by  the  greatest  masters  of 
sculpture  that  ever  struck  marble  ; drawing-rooms  painted  by 
Titian  and  Veronese  ; and  you  won’t  accept,  nor  save  these 
as  they  are,  but  you  will  rather  fetch  the  house-painter  from 
over  the  way,  and  let  Titian  and  Veronese  house  the  rats. 
“Yes,”  of  course,  you  answer  ; “we  want  nice  houses  here, 
not  houses  in  Verona.  What  should  we  do  with  houses  in 
Verona?”  And  I answer,  do  precisely  what  you  do  with  the 
most  expensive  part  of  your  possessions  here  : take  pride  in 
them — only  a noble  pride.  You  know  well,  when  you  ex- 
amine your  own  hearts,  that  the  greater  part  of  the  sums  you 
spend  on  possessions  are  spent  for  pride.  Why  are  your  car- 
riages nicely  painted  and  finished  outside  ? You  don’t  see  the 
outsides  as  you  sit  in  them— the  outsides  are  for  other  peo- 
ple to  see.  Why  are  your  exteriors  of  houses  so  well  finished, 
your  furniture  so  polished  and  costly,  but  for  other  people  to 
see  ? You  are  just  as  comfortable  yourselves,  writing  on  your 
old  friend  of  a desk,  with  the  white  cloudings  in  his  leather, 
and  using  the  light  of  a window  which  is  nothing  but  a hole 
in  the  brick  wall.  And  all  that  is  desirable  to  be  done  in  this 
matter,  is  merely  to  take  pride  in  preserving  great  art,  instead 
of  in  producing  mean  art ; pride  in  the  possession  of  precious 
and  enduring  things,  a little  way  off,  instead  of  slight  and 
perishing  things  near  at  hand.  You  know,  in  old  English 
times,  our  kings  liked  to  have  lordships  and  dukedoms  abroad,, 


188 


A JOY  FOR  EVER . 


and  why  should  not  you,  merchant  princes,  like  to  have  lord- 
ships  and  estates  abroad  ? Believe  me,  rightly  understood,  it 
would  be  a prouder,  and  in  the  full  sense  of  our  English  word, 
more  “ respectable  ” thing  to  be  lord  of  a palace  at  Verona,  or 
of  a cloister  full  of  frescos  at  Florence,  than  to  have  a file  of 
servants  dressed  in  the  finest  liveries  that  ever  tailor  stitched, 
as  long  as  would  reach  from  here  to  Bolton  : — yes,  and  a 
prouder  thing  to  send  people  to  travel  in  Italy,  who  would 
have  to  say  every  now  and  then,  of  some  fair  piece  of  art, 
“ Ah  ! this  was  kept  here  for  us  by  the  good  people  of  Man- 
chester,” than  to  bring  them  travelling  all  the  way  here,  ex- 
claiming of  your  various  art  treasures,  “ These  were  brought 
here  for  us  (not  altogether  without  harm)  by  the  good  peo- 
ple of  Manchester.”  “Ah  !”  but  you  say,  “ the  Art  Treasures 
Exhibition  will  pay  : but  Veronese  palaces  won’t.”  Pardon 
me.  They  would  pay,  less  directly,  but  far  more  richly.  Do 
you  suppose  it  is  in  the  long  run  good  for  Manchester,  or 
good  for  England,  that  the  Continent  should  be  in  the  state 
it  is  ? Do  you  think  the  perpetual  fear  of  revolution,  or  the 
perpetual  repression  of  thought  and  energy  that  clouds  and 
encumbers  the  nations  of  Europe,  is  eventually  profitable  for 
us  ? Were  we  any  the  better  of  the  course  of  affairs  in  ’48  ; 
or  has  the  stabling  of  the  dragoon  horses  in  the  great  houses 
of  Italy,  any  distinct  effect  in  the  promotion  of  the  cotton- 
trade  ? Not  so.  But  every  stake  that  you  could  hold  in  the 
stability  of  the  Continent,  and  every  effort  that  you  could 
make  to  give  example  of  English  habits  and  principles  on  the 
Continent,  and  every  kind  deed  that  you  could  do  in  reliev- 
ing distress  and  preventing  despair  cn  the  Continent,  would 
have  tenfold  reaction  on  the  prosperity  of  England,  and  open 
and  urge,  in  a thousand  unforeseen  directions,  the  sluices  of 
commerce  and  the  springs  of  industry. 

I could  press,  if  I chose,  both  these  motives  upon  you,  of 
pride  and  self-interest,  with  more  force,  but  these  are  not  mo- 
tives which  ought  to  be  urged  upon  you  at  all.  The  only 
motive  that  I ought  to  put  before  you  is  simply  that  it  would 
be  right  to  do  this  ; that  the  holding  of  property  abroad,  and 
the  personal  efforts  of  Englishmen  to  redeem  the  condition 


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189 


of  foreign  nations,  are  among  the  most  direct  pieces  of  duty 
which  our  wealth  renders  incumbent  upon  us.  I do  not — and 
in  all  truth  and  deliberateness  I say  this — I do  not  know  any- 
thing more  ludicrous  among  the  self-deceptions  of  -well-meaning 
people  than  their  notion  of  patriotism,  as  requiring  them  to 
limit  their  efforts  to  the  good  of  their  own  country  ; — the  no- 
tion that  charity  is  a geographical  virtue,  and  that  what  it  is 
holy  and  righteous  to  do  for  people  on  one  bank  of  a river,  it 
is  quite  improper  and  unnatural  to  do  for  people  on  the  other. 

It  will  be  a wonderful  thing,  some  day  or  other,  for  the 
. Christian  world  to  remember,  that  it  went  on  thinking  for  two 
: thousand  years  that  neighbours  were  neighbours  at  Jerusalem, 
but  not  at  Jericho  ; a wonderful  thing  for  us  English  to  re- 
flect, in  after-years,  how  long  it  was  before  we  could  shake 
hands  with  anybody  across  that  shallow  salt  wash,  which  the 
very  chalk-dust  of  its  two  shores  whitens  from  Folkstone  to 
Ambleteuse. 

Nor  ought  the  motive  of  gratitude,  as  well  as  that  of  Mercy, 
to  be  without  its  influence  on  you,  who  have  been  the  first  to 
ask  to  see,  and  the  first  to  show  to  us,  the  treasures  which 
this  poor  lost  Italy  has  given  to  England.  Remember  all 
these  things  that  delight  you  here  were  hers — hers  either 
in  fact  or  in  teaching  ; hers,  in  fact,  are  all  the  most  pow- 
erful and  most  touching  paintings  of  old  time  that  now 
glow  upon  your  walls  ; hers  in  teaching  are  all  the  best  and 
greatest  of  descendant  souls — your  Reynolds  and  your  Gains- 
borough never  could  have  painted  but  for  Venice  ; and  the 
energies  which  have  given  the  only  true  life  to  your  existing 
art  were  first  stirred  by  voices  of  the  dead,  that  haunted  the 
. Sacred  Field  of  Pisa. 

Well,  all  these  motives  for  some  definite  course  of  action  on 
our  part  towards  foreign  countries  rest  upon  very  serious 
facts  ; too  serious,  perhaps  you  will  think,  to  be  interfered 
with  ; for  we  are  all  of  us  in  the  habit  of  leaving  great  things 
alone,  as  if  Providence  would  mind  them,  and  attending  our- 
. selves  only  to  little  things  which  we  know,  practically,  Provi- 
dence doesn’t  mind  unless  we  do.  We  are  ready  enough  to 
give  care  to  the  growing  of  pines  and  lettuces,  knowing  that 


190 


A JOT  FOR  EVER 


they  don’t  grow  Providentially  sweet  or  large  unless  we  lock 
after  them  ; but  we  don’t  give  any  care  to  the  good  of  Italy 
or  Germany,  because  we  think  that  they  will  grow  Providen- 
tially happy  without  any  of  our  meddling. 

Let  us  leave  the  great  things,  then,  and  think  of  little 
things  ; not  of  the  destruction  of  whole  provinces  in  war, 
which  it  may  not  be  any  business  of  ours  to  prevent ; but  of 
the  destruction  of  poor  little  pictures  in  peace,  from  which  it 
surely  would  not  be  much  out  of  our  way  to  save  them.  You 
know  I said,  just  now,  we  were  all  of  us  engaged  in  pulling  pict- 
ures to  pieces  by  deputy,  and  you  did  not  believe  me.  Con- 
sider, then,  this  similitude  of  ourselves.  Suppose  you  saw  (as 
I doubt  not  you  often  do  see)  a prudent  and  kind  young  lady 
sitting  at  work,  in  the  corner  of  a quiet  room,  knitting  com- 
forters for  her  cousins,  and  that  just  outside,  in  the  hall,  you 
saw  a cat  and  her  kittens  at  play  among  the  family  pictures  ; 
amusing  themselves  especially  with  the  best  Vandykes,  by 
getting  on  the  tops  of  the  frames,  and  then  scrambling  down 
the  canvasses  by  their  claws  ; and  on  some  one’s  informing  the 
young  lady  of  these  proceedings  of  the  cat  and  kittens,  sup- 
pose she  answered  that  it  wasn’t  her  cat,  but  her  sister’s,  and 
the  pictures  weren’t  hers,  but  her  uncle’s,  and  she  couldn’t 
leave  her  work,  for  she  had  to  make  so  many  pairs  of  com- 
forters before  dinner.  Would  you  not  say  that  the  prudent 
and  kind  young  lady  was,  on  the  Tvhole,  answerable  for  the 
additional  touches  of  claw  on  the  Vandykes?  Now,  that  is 
precisely  what  we  prudent  and  kind  English  are  doing,  only 
on  a larger  scale.  Here  we  sit  in  Manchester,  hard  at  work, 
very  properly,  making  comforters  for  our  cousins  all  over  the 
world.  Just  outside  there  in  the  hall — that  beautiful  marble 
hall  of  Italy — the  cats  and  kittens  and  monkeys  are  at  play 
among  the  pictures  : I assure  you,  in  the  course  of  the  fifteen 
years  in  which  I have  been  working  in  those  places  in  which 
the  most  precious  remnants  of  European  art  exist,  a sensation, 
whether  I would  or  no,  was  gradually  made  distinct  and  deep 
in  my  mind,  that  I was  living  and  working  in  the  midst  of  a 
den  of  monkeys  ; — sometimes  amiable  and  affectionate  mon- 
keys, with  ail  manner  of  winning  ways  and  kind  intentions 


ACCUMULATION  AND  DISTRIBUTION 


191 


more  frequently  selfish  and  malicious  monkeys,  but,  -whatever 
tlieir  disposition,  squabbling  continually  about  nuts,  and  tli8 
best  places  on  the  barren  sticks  of  trees  ; and  that  all  this 
monkeys’ den  was  filled,  by  mischance,  with  precious  pictures, 
and  the  witty  and  wilful  beasts  were  always  wrrapping  them- 
selves up  and  going  to  sleep  in  pictures,  or  tearing  holes  in 
them  to  grin  through  ; or  tasting  them  and  spitting  them  out 
again,  or  twisting  them  up  into  ropes  and  making  swings  of 
them  ; and  that  sometimes  only,  by  watching  one’s  oppor- 
tunity, and  bearing  a scratch  or  a bite,  one  could  rescue  the 
corner  of  a Tintoret,  or  Paul  Veronese,  and  push  it  through 
the  bars  into  a place  of  safety.  Literally,  I assure  you,  this 
was,  and  this  is,  the  fixed  impression  on  my  mind  of  the  state 
of  matters  in  Italy.  And  see  how.  The  professors  of  art  in 
Italy,  having  long  followed  a method  of  study  peculiar  to 
themselves,  have  at  last  arrived  at  a form  of  art  peculiar  to 
themselves ; very  different  from  that  which  was  arrived  at  by 
Correggio  and  Titian.  Naturally,  the  professors  like  their  own 
form  the  best  ; and,  as  the  old  pictures  are  generally  not  so 
startling  to  the  eye  as  the  modern  ones,  the  dukes  and  counts 
who  possess  them,  and  who  like  to  see  their  galleries  look  new 
and  fine  (and  are  persuaded  also  that  a celebrated  chef-d’oeuvre 
ought  always  to  catch  the  eye  at  a quarter  of  a mile  off), 
believe  the  professors  who  tell  them  their  sober  pictures  are 
quite  faded,  and  good  for  nothing,  and  should  all  be  brought 
bright  again  ; and  accordingly,  give  the  sober  pictures  to  the 
professors,  to  be  put  right  by  rules  of  art.  Then,  the  profes- 
sors repaint  the  old  pictures  in  all  the  principal  places,  leaving 
perhaps  only  a bit  of  background  to  set  off  their  own  work. 
And  thus  the  professors  come  to  be  generally  figured  in  my 
mind,  as  the  monkeys  wTho  tear  holes  in  the  pictures,  to  grin 
through.  Then  the  picture-dealers,  who  live  by  the  pictures, 
cannot  sell  them  to  the  English  in  their  old  and  pure  state  ; 
all  the  good  work  must  be  covered  with  new  paint,  and  var- 
nished so  as  to  look  like  one  of  the  professorial  pictures  in 
the  great  gallery,  before  it  is  saleable.  And  thus  the  dealers 
come  to  be  imaged,  in  my  mind,  as  the  monkeys  who  make 
ropes  of  the  pictures,  to  swing  by.  Then,  every  now  and  then* 


192  A JOY  FOR  EVER. 

in  some  old  stable,  or  wine-cellar,  or  timber-shed,  behind 
some  forgotten  vats  or  faggots,  somebody  finds  a fresco  of 
Perugino’s  or  Giotto’s,  but  doesn’t  think  much  of  it,  and  has 
no  idea  of  having  people  coming  into  his  cellar,  or  being 
obliged  to  move  his  faggots  ; and  so  he  whitewashes  the 
fresco,  and  puts  the  faggots  back  again  ; and  these  kind  of 
persons,  therefore,  come  generally  to  be  imaged  in  my  mind, 
as  the  monkeys  who  taste  the  pictures,  and  spit  them  out,  not 
finding  them  nice.  While,  finally,  the  squabbling  for  nuts 
and  apples  (called  in  Italy  “ bella  liberta  ”)  goes  on  all  day 
long. 

Now,  all  this  might  soon  be  put  an  end  to,  if  we  English,  who 
are  so  fond  of  travelling  in  the  body,  would  also  travel  a little 
in  soul  : We  think  it  a great  triumph  to  get  our  packages  and 
our  persons  carried  at  a fast  pace,  but  we  never  take  the 
slightest  trouble  to  put  any  pace  into  our  perceptions ; we 
stay  usually  at  home  in  thought,  or  if  we  ever  mentally  see 
the  world,  it  is  at  the  old  stage-coach  or  waggon  rate.  Do 
but  consider  what  an  odd  sight  it  would  be,  if  it  were  only 
quite  clear  to  you  how  things  are  really  going  on — how,  here 
in  England,  we  are  making  enormous  and  expensive  efforts  to 
produce  new  art  of  all  kinds,  knowing'  and  confessing  all  the 
while  that  the  greater  part  of  it  is  bad,  but  struggling  still  to 
produce  new  patterns  of  wall-papers,  and  new  shapes  of  tea- 
pots, and  new  pictures,  and  statues,  and  architecture  ; and 
pluming  and  cackling  if  ever  a tea-pot  or  a picture  has  the 
least  good  in  it  ; — all  the  while  taking  no  thought  whatever 
of  the  best  possible  pictures,  and  statues,  and  wall-patterns 
already  in  existence,  which  require  nothing  but  to  be  taken 
common  care  of,  and  kept  from  damp  and  dust : but  we  let 
the  walls  fall  that  Giotto  patterned,  and  the  canvases  rot  that 
Tintoret  painted,  and  the  architecture  be  dashed  to  pieces 
that  St.  Louis  built,  while  we  are  furnishing  our  drawing- 
rooms with  prize  upholstery,  and  writing  accounts  of  our 
handsome  warehouses  to  the  country  papers.  Don’t  think  I 
use  my  words  vaguely  or  generally  : I speak  of  literal  facta 
Giotto’s  frescos  at  Assisi  are  perishing  at  this  moment  for 
want  of  decent  care  ; Tintoret’s  pictures  in  San  Sebastian  at 


ACCUMULATION  AND  DISTRIBUTION. 


193 


Venice,  are  at  this  instant  rotting  piecemeal  into  grey  rags ; 
St.  Louis’s  chapel,  at  Carcassonne,  is  at  this  moment  lying  in 
shattered  fragments  in  the  market-place.  And  here  we  are 
5,11  cawing  and  crowing,  poor  little  half-fledged  daws  as  we 
are,  about  the  pretty  sticks  and  wTool  in  our  own  nests. 
There’s  hardly  a day  passes,  when  I am  at  home,  but  I get  a 
letter  from  some  well-meaning  country  clergyman,  deeply 
anxious  about  the  state  of  his  parish  church,  and  breaking  his 
heart  to  get  money  together  that  he  may  hold  up  some 
wretched  remnant  of  Tudor  tracery,  with  one  niche  in  the 
corner  and  no  statue — when  all  the  while  the  mightiest  piles 
of  religious  architecture  and  sculpture  that  ever  the  world 
saw  are  being  blasted  and  withered  away,  without  one  glance 
of  pity  or  regret.  The  country  clergyman  does  not  care  for 
them — he  has  a sea-sick  imagination  that  cannot  cross  channel. 
What  is  it  to  him,  if  the  angels  of  Assisi  fade  from  its  vaults, 
or  the  queens  and  kings  of  Chartres  fall  from  their  pedestals? 
They  are  not  in  his  parish. 

“ What ! ” you  will  say,  “ are  we  not  to  produce  any  new 
art,  nor  take  care  of  our  parish  churches  ? ” No,  certainly 
not,  until  you  have  taken  proper  care  of  the  art  you  have  got 
already,  and  of  the  best  churches  out  of  the  parish.  Your 
first  and  proper  standing  is  not  as  churchwardens  and  parish 
overseers,  in  an  English  county,  but  as  members  of  the  great 
Christian  community  of  Europe.  And  as  members  of  that 
community  (in  which  alone,  observe,  pure  and  precious  an- 
cient art  exists,  for  there  is  none  in  America,  none  in  Asia, 
none  in  Africa),  you  conduct  yourselves  precisely  as  a manu- 
facturer would,  who  attended  to  his  looms,  but  left  his  ware- 
house without  a roof.  The  rain  floods  your  warehouse,  the  rats 
frolic  in  it,  the  spiders  spin  in  it,  the  choughs  build  in  it, 
the  wall-plague  frets  and  festers  in  it,  and  still  you  keep 
weave,  weave,  weaving  at  your  wretched  webs,  and  thinking 
you  are  growing  rich,  while  more  is  gnawed  out  of  your 
warehouse  in  an  hour  than  you  can  weave  in  a twelvemonth. 

Even  this  similitude  is  not  absurd  enough  to  set  us  rightly 
forth.  The  weaver  would,  or  might,  at  least,  hope  that  his 
new  woof  was  as  stout  as  the  old  ones,  and  that,  therefore,  in 


194 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


spite  of  rain  and  ravage,  he  would  have  something  to  wrap 
himself  in  when  he  needed  it.  But  our  webs  rot  as  we  spin. 
The  very  fact  that  we  despise  the  great  art  of  the  past  shows 
that  we  cannot  produce  great  art  now.  If  we  could  do  it,  we 
should  love  it  when  we  saw  it  done — if  we  really  cared  for  ih 
we  should  recognise  it  and  keep  it. ; but  we  don’t  care  for  ih 
It  is  not  art  that  we  want ; it  is  amusement,  gratification  ol 
pride,  present  gain — anything  in  the  world  but  art : let  it  rot, 
we  shall  always  have  enough  to  talk  about  and  hang  over  our 
sideboards. 

You  will  (I  hope)  finally  ask  me  what  is  the  outcome  of  all 
this,  practicable  to-morrow  morning  by  us  who  are  sitting 
here  ? These  are  the  main  practical  outcomes  from  it : In  the 
first  place,  don’t  grumble  when  you  hear  of  a new  picture  being 
bought  by  Government  at  a large  price.  There  are  many  pict- 
ures in  Europe  now  in  danger  of  destruction  which  are,  in 
the  true  sense  of  the  word,  priceless ; the  proper  price  is 
simply  that  which  it  is  necessary  to  give  to  get  and  to  save 
them.  If  you  can  get  them  for  fifty  pounds,  do  ; if  not  for 
less  than  a hundred,  do  ; if  not  for  less  than  five  thousand, 
do  ; if  not  for  less  than  twenty  thousand,  do  ; never  mind  be- 
ing imposed  upon  ; there  is  nothing  disgraceful  in  being 
imposed  upon  : the  only  disgrace  is  in  imposing ; and  you 
can’t  in  general  get  anything  much  worth  having,  in  the  way 
of  Continental  art,  but  it  must  be  with  the  help  or  connivance  of 
numbers  of  people,  who,  indeed,  ought  to  have  nothing  to  do 
with  the  matter,  but  who  practically  have,  and  always  will 
have,  everything  to  do  with  it ; and  if  you  don’t  choose  to 
submit  to  be  cheated  by  them  out  of  a ducat  here  and  a 
zecchin  there,  you  will  be  cheated  by  them  out  of  your  pict- 
ure ; and  whether  you  are  most  imposed  upon  in  losing  that, 
cr  the  zecchins,  I think  I may  leave  you  to  judge ; though  I 
know  there  are  many  political  economists,  who  would  rather 
leave  a bag  of  gold  on  a garret-table,  than  give  a porter  six- 
pence extra  to  carry  it  downstairs. 

That,  then,  is  the  first  practical  outcome  of  the  matter. 
Never  grumble,  but  be  glad  when  you  hear  of  a new  picture 
being  bought  at  a large  price.  In  the  long  run,  the  dearest 


ACCUMULATION  AND  DISTRIBUTION. 


195 


pictures  are  always  the  best  bargains  ; and,  I repeat  (for  else 
you  might  think  I said  it  in  mere  hurry  of  talk,  and  not  de- 
liberately), there  are  some  pictures  which  are  without  price. 
You  should  stand,  nationally,  at  the  edge  of  Dover  cliffs — • 
Shakespeare’s — and  wave  blank  cheques  in  the  eyes  of  the 
nations  on  the  other  side  of  the  sea,  freely  offered,  for  such 
and  such  canvases  of  theirs. 

Then  the  next  practical  outcome  of  it  is — Never  buy  a 
copy  of  a picture,  under  any  circumstances  whatever.  All 
copies  are  bad ; because  no  painter  who  is  worth  a straw  ever 
will  copy.  He  will  make  a study  of  a picture  he  likes,  for  his 
own  use,  in  his  own  way ; but  he  won’t  and  can’t  copy  ; 
whenever  you  buy  a copy,  you  buy  so  much  misunderstand- 
ing of  the  original,  and  encourage  a dull  person  in  following 
a business  he  is  not  fit  for,  besides  increasing  ultimately 
chances  of  mistake  and  imposture,  and  farthering,  as  directly 
as  money  can  farther,  the  cause  of  ignorance  in  all  directions. 
You  may,  in  fact,  consider  yourself  as  having  purchased  a 
certain  quantity  of  mistakes ; and,  according  to  your  power, 
being  engaged  in  disseminating  them. 

I do  not  mean,  however,  that  copies  should  never  be  made. 
A certain  number  of  dull  persons  should  always  be  employed 
by  a Government  in  making  the  most  accurate  copies  possible 
of  all  good  pictures ; these  copies,  though  artistically  value- 
less, would  be  historically  and  documentarily  valuable,  in 
the  event  of  the  destruction  of  the  original  picture.  The 
studies  also  made  by  great  artists  for  their  own  use,  should  be 
sought  after  with  the  greatest  eagerness  ; they  are  often  to  be 
bought  cheap ; and  in  connection  with  mechanical  copies, 
would  become  very  precious ; tracings  from  frescos  and 
other  large  works  are  all  of  great  value  ; for  though  a tracing 
is  liable  to  just  as  many  mistakes  as  a copy,  the  mistakes  in  a 
tracing  are  of  one  kind  only,  which  may  be  allowed  for,  but 
the  mistakes  of  a common  copyist  are  of  all  conceivable  kinds  : 
finally,  engravings,  in  so  far  as  they  convey  certain  facts  about 
the  pictures,  are  often  serviceable  and  valuable.  I can’t,  of 
course,  enter  into  details  in  these  matters  just  now  ; only  this 
main  piece  of  advice  I can  safely  give  you — never  to  buy 


196 


A JOT  FOR  EVER. 


copies  of  pictures  (for  your  private  possession)  which  pretend 
to  give  a facsimile  that  shall  be  in  any  wise  representative  of, 
or  equal  to,  the  original.  Whenever  you  do  so,  you  are  onl;? 
lowering  your  taste,  and  wasting  your  money.  And  if  you 
are  generous  and  wise,  you  will  be  ready  rather  to  subscribe 
as  much  as  you  would  have  given  for  a copy  of  a great  pict- 
ure, towards  its  purchase,  or  the  purchase  of  some  other  like 
it,  by  the  nation.  There  ought  to  be  a great  National  Society 
instituted  for  the  purchase  of  pictures ; presenting  them 
to  the  various  galleries  in  our  great  cities,  and  watching  there 
over  their  safety  : but  in  the  meantime,  you  can  always  act 
safely  and  beneficially  by  merely  allowing  your  artist  friends 
to  buy  pictures  for  you,  when  they  see  good  ones.  Never 
buy  for  yourselves,  nor  go  to  the  foreign  dealers  ; but  let  any 
painter  whom  you  know  be  entrusted,  when  he  finds  a 
neglected  old  picture  in  an  old  house,  to  try  if  he  cannot  get 
it  for  you  ; then,  if  you  like  it,  keep  it ; if  not,  send  it  to  the 
hammer,  and  you  will  find  that  you  do  not  lose  money  on 
pictures  so  purchased. 

And  the  third  and  chief  practical  outcome  of  the  matter  is 
this  general  one : Wherever  you  go,  whatever  you  do,  act 
more  for  preservation  and  less  for  production.  I assure  you, 
the  world  is,  generally  speaking,  in  calamitous  disorder,  and 
just  because  you  have  managed  to  thrust  some  of  the  lumber 
aside,  and  get  an  available  corner  for  yourselves,  you  think 
you  should  do  nothing  but  sit  spinning  in  it  all  day  long  — 
while,  as  householders  and  economists,  your  first  thought  and 
effort  should  be,  to  set  things  more  square  all  about  you. 
Try  to  set  the  ground  floors  in  order,  and  get  the  rottenness 
out  of  your  granaries.  Then  sit  and  spin,  but  not  till  then. 

IV.  Distribution. — And  now,  lastly,  we  come  to  the  fourth 
great  head  of  our  inquiry,  the  question  of  the  wise  distribu- 
tion of  the  art  we  have  gathered  and  preserved.  It  must  be 
evident  to  us,  at  a moment’s  thought,  that  the  way  in  which 
works  of  art  are  on  the  whole  most  useful  to  the  nation  to 
which  the}''  belong,  must  be  by  their  collection  in  public  gab 
leries,  supposing  those  galleries  properly  managed.  But 


ACCUMULATION  AND  DISTRIBUTION. 


197 


there  is  one  disadvantage  attached  necessarily  to  gallery  ex- 
hibition, namely,  the  extent  of  mischief  which  may  be  done 
by  one  foolish  curator.  As  long  as  the  pictures  which  form 
the  national  wealth  are  disposed  in  private  collections,  the 
chance  is  always  that  the  people  who  buy  them  will  be  just 
the  people  who  are  fond  of  them  ; and  that  the  sense  of  ex- 
changeable value  in  the  commodity  they  possess,  will  induce 
them,  even  if  they  do  not  esteem  it  themselves,  to  take  such 
care  of  it  as  will  preserve  its  value  undiminished.  At  all 
events,  so  long  as  wTorks  of  art  are  scattered  throughout  the 
nation,  no  universal  destruction  of  them  is  possible  ; a cer- 
tain average  only  are  lost  by  accidents  from  time  to  time. 
But  when  they  are  once  collected  in  a large  public  gallery,  if 
the  appointment  of  curator  becomes  in  any  way  a matter  of 
formality,  or  the  post  is  so  lucrative  as  to  be  disputed  by 
place-hunters,  let  but  one  foolish  or  careless  person  get  pos- 
session of  it,  and  perhaps  you  may  have  all  your  fine  pictures 
repainted,  and  the  national  property  destroyed,  in  a month. 
That  is  actually  the  case  at  this  moment  in  several  great  for- 
eign galleries.  They  are  the  places  of  execution  of  pictures  : 
over  their  doors  you  only  want  the  Dantesque  inscription, 
“Lasciate  ogni  speranza,  voi  che  entrate.” 

Supposing,  however,  this  danger  properly  guarded  against, 
as  it  would  be  always  by  a nation  which  either  knew  the 
value,  or  understood  the  meaning,  of  painting,*  arrangement 
in  a public  gallery  is  the  safest,  as  well  as  the  most  serviceable, 
method  of  exhibiting  pictures ; and  it  is  the  only  mode  in 
which  their  historical  value  can  be  brought  out,  and  their 
historical  meaning  made  clear.  But  great  good  is  also  to  be 
done  by  encouraging  the  private  possession  of  pictures  ; partly 
as  a means  of  study,  (much  more  being  always  discovered  in 
any  work  of  art  by  a person  who  has  it  perpetually  near  him 
than  by  one  who  only  sees  it  from  time  to  time,)  and  also 
as  a means  of  refining  the  habits  and  touching  the  hearts  of 
the  masses  of  the  nation  in  their  domestic  life. 

* It  would  be  a great  point  gained  towards  the  preservation  of  pictures 
it  it  were  made  a rule  that  at  every  operation  they  underwent,  the  exact 
spots  in  which  they  have  been  re-painted  should  be  recorded  in  writing. 


198 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


For  these  last  purposes  the  most  serviceable  art  is  the  living 
art  of  the  time ; the  particular  tastes  of  the  people  will  be 
best  met,  and  their  particular  ignorances  best  corrected,  by 
painters  labouring  in  the  midst  of  them,  more  or  less  guided 
to  the  knowledge  of  what  is  wanted  by  the  degree  of  sympathy 
with  which  their  work  is  received.  So  then,  generally,  it  should 
be  the  object  of  government,  and  of  all  patrons  of  art,  to  col- 
lect, as  far  as  may  be,  the  works  of  dead  masters  in  public 
galleries,  arranging  them  so  as  to  illustrate  the  history  of  na- 
tions, and  the  progress  and  influence  of  their  arts  ; and  to 
encourage  the  private  possession  of  the  works  of  living  mas- 
ters. And  the  first  and  best  way  in  which  to  encourage  such 
private  possession  is,  of  course,  to  keep  down  the  price  of  them 
as  far  as  you  can. 

I hope  there  are  not  a great  many  painters  in  the  room  ; if 
there  are,  I entreat  their  patience  for  the  next  quarter  of  an 
hour : if  they  will  bear  with  me  for  so  long,  I hope  they  will 
not,  finally,  be  offended  by  what  I am  going  to  say. 

I repeat,  trusting  to  their  indulgence  in  the  interim,  that 
the  first  object  of  our  national  economy,  as  respects  the  distri- 
bution of  modern  art,  should  be  steadily  and  rationally  to 
limit  its  prices,  since  by  doing  so,  you  will  produce  two  effects  ; 
you  will  make  the  painters  produce  more  pictures,  two  or  three 
instead  of  one,  if  they  wish  to  make  money ; and  you  will,  by 
bringing  good  pictures  within  the  reach  of  people  of  moderate 
income,  excite  the  general  interest  of  the  nation  in  them,  in- 
crease a thousandfold  the  demand  for  the  commodity,  and 
therefore  its  wholesome  and  natural  production. 

I know  how  many  objections  must  arise  in  your  minds  at 
this  moment  to  what  I say ; but  you  must  be  aware  that  it  is 
not  possible  for  me  in  an  hour  to  explain  all  the  moral  and 
commercial  bearings  of  such  a principle  as  this.  Only,  believe 
me,  I do  not  speak  lightly  ; I think  I have  considered  all  the 
objections  which  could  be  rationally  brought  forward,  though 
I have  time  at  present  only  to  glance  at  the  main  one.  namely, 
the  idea  that  the  high  prices  paid  for  modern  pictures  are 
either  honourable,  or  serviceable,  to  the  painter.  So  far  from 
this  being  so,  I believe  one  of  the  principal  obstacles  to  the 


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199 


progress  of  modern  art  to  be  the  high  prices  given  for  good 
modern  pictures.  For  observe  first  the  action  of  this  high  re- 
muneration on  the  artist's  mind.  If  he  “gets  on,”  as  it  is 
called,  catches  the  eye  of  the  public,  and  especially  of  the 
public  of  the  upper  classes,  there  is  hardly  any  limit  to  the 
fortune  he  may  acquire  ; so  that,  in  his  early  years,  his  mind 
is  naturally  led  to  dwell  on  this  worldly  and  wealthy  eminence 
as  the  main  thing  to  be  reached  by  his  art ; if  he  finds  that 
he  is  not  gradually  rising  towards  it,  he  thinks  there  is  some- 
thing wrong  in  his  work  ; or,  if  he  is  too  proud  to  think  that, 
still  the  bribe  of  wealth  and  honour  warps  him  from  his  honest 
labour  into  efforts  to  attract  attention  ; and  he  gradually  loses 
both  his  power  of  mind  and  his  rectitude  of  purpose.  This,  ac- 
cording to  the  degree  of  avarice  or  ambition  which  exists  in 
any  painter’s  mind,  is  the  necessary  influence  upon  him  of  the 
hope  of  great  wealth  and  reputation.  But  the  harm  is  still 
greater,  in  so  far  as  the  possibility  of  attaining  fortune  of  this 
kind  tempts  people  continually  to  become  painters  who  have 
no  real  gift  for  the  work ; and  on  whom  these  motives  of  mere 
worldly  interest  have  exclusive  influence  ; — men  who  torment 
and  abuse  the  patient  workers,  eclipse  or  thrust  aside  all  deli- 
cate and  good  pictures  by  their  own  gaudy  and  coarse  ones, 
corrupt  the  taste  of  the  public,  and  do  the  greatest  amount  of 
mischief  to  the  schools  of  art  in  their  day  which  it  is  possible 
for  their  capacities  to  effect ; and  it  is  quite  wonderful  how 
much  mischief  may  be  done  even  by  small  capacity.  If  you 
could  by  any  means  succeed  in  keeping  the  prices  of  pictures 
down,  you  would  throw  all  these  disturbers  out  of  the  way  at 
once. 

You  may  perhaps  think  that  this  severe  treatment  would  do 
more  harm  than  good,  by  withdrawing  the  wholesome  element 
of  emulation,  and  giving  no  stimulus  to  exertion  ; but  I am 
sorry  to  say  that  artists  will  always  be  sufficiently  jealous  of 
one  another,  whether  you  pay  them  large  or  low  prices  ; and 
as  for  stimulus  to  exertion,  believe  me,  no  good  work  in  this 
world  was  ever  done  for  money,  nor  while  the  slightest 
thought  of  money  affected  the  painter’s  mind.  Whatever 
idea  of  pecuniary  value  enters  into  his  thoughts  as  he  works, 


200 


A JOY  FOE  EYFE. 


will,  in  proportion  to  the  distinctness  of  its  presence,  shorten 
his  power.  A real  painter  will  work  for  you  exquisitely,  if 
you  give  him,  as  I told  you  a little  while  ago,  bread  and  water 
and  salt  ; and  a bad  painter  will  work  badly  and  hastily, 
though  you  give  him  a palace  to  live  in,  and  a princedom  to 
live  upon.  Turner  got,  in  his  earlier  years,  half-a-crown  a 
day  and  his  supper  (not  bad  pay,  neither)  ; and  he  learned  to 
paint  upon  that.  And  I believe  that  there  is  no  chance  of 
art’s  truly  flourishing  in  any  country,  until  you  make  it  a 
simple  and  plain  business,  providing  its  masters  with  an  easy 
competence,  but  rarely  with  anything  more.  And  I say  this, 
not  because  I despise  the  great  painter,  but  because  I honour 
him  ; and  I should  no  more  think  of  adding  to  his  respecta- 
bility or  happiness  by  giving  him  riches,  than,  if  Shakespeare 
or  Milton  were  alive,  I should  think  we  added  to  their  re- 
spectability, or  were  likely  to  get  better  work  from  them,  by 
making  them  millionaires. 

But,  observe,  it  is  not  only  the  painter  himself  whom  you 
injure,  by  giving  him  too  high  prices  ; you  injure  all  the  in- 
ferior painters  of  the  day.  If  they  are  modest,  they  will  be 
discouraged  and  depressed  by  the  feeling  that  their  doings 
are  worth  so  little,  comparatively,  in  your  eyes  ; — if  proud,  all 
their  worst  passions  will  be  aroused,  and  the  insult  or  oppro- 
brium which  they  will  try  to  cast  on  their  successful  rival  will 
not  only  afflict  and  wound  him,  but  at  last  sour  and  harden 
him  : he  cannot  pass  through  such  a trial  without  grievous 
harm. 

That,  then,  is  the  effect  you  produce  on  the  painter  of  mark, 
and  on  the  inferior  ones  of  his  own  standing.  But  you  do 
worse  than  this ; you  deprive  yourselves,  by  what  you  give 
for  the  fashionable  picture,  of  the  power  of  helping  the 
younger  men  who  are  coming  forward.  Be  it  admitted,  for 
argument’s  sake,  if  you  are  not  convinced  by  what  I have  said, 
that  you  do  no  harm  to  the  great  man  by  paying  him  well  ; 
yet  certainly  you  do  him  no  special  good.  His  reputation  is 
established,  and  his  fortune  made  ; he  does  not  care  whether 
you  buy  or  not : he  thinks  he  is  rather  doing  you  a favour 
than  otherwise  by  letting  you  have  one  of  his  pictures  at  all. 


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201 


All  tlie  good  you  do  him  is  to  help  him  to  buy  a new  pair  of 
carriage  horses  ; whereas,  with  that  same  sum  which  thus  you 
cast  away,  you  might  have  relieved  the  hearts  and  preserved 
the  health  of  twenty  young  painters  ; and  if  among  those 
twenty,  you  but  chanced  on  one  in  whom  a true  latent  pow7er 
had  been  hindered  by  his  poverty,  just  consider  what  a far- 
branching,  far-embracing  good  you  have  wrought  with  that 
lucky  expenditure  of  yours.  I say,  “ Consider  it  ” in  vain  ; 
you  cannot  consider  it,  for  you  cannot  conceive  the  sickness 
of  the  heart  with  which  a young  painter  of  deep  feeling  toils 
through  his  first  obscurity  ; — his  sense  of  the  strong  voice 
within  him,  which  you  will  not  hear  ; — his  vain,  fond,  wonder- 
ing witness  to  the  things  you  will  not  see  ; — his  far  away  per- 
ception of  things  that  he  could  accomplish  if  he  had  but  peace 
and  time,  all  unapproachable  and  vanishing  from  him,  because 
no  one  wall  leave  him  peace  or  grant  him  time  : all  his  friends 
falling  back  from  him  ; those  whom  he  would  most  reverently 
obey  rebuking  and  paralysing  him ; and  last  and  wrorst  of  all, 
those  who  believe  in  him  the  most  faithfully  suffering  by  him 
the  most  bitterly  ; — the  wife’s  eyes,  in  their  sweet  ambition, 
shining  brighter  as  the  cheek  wastes  away  ; and  the  little  lips 
at  his  side  parched  and  pale  which  one  day,  he  knows,  though 
he  may  never  see  it,  will  quiver  so  proudly  when  they  name 
his  name,  calling  him  “ our  father.”  You  deprive  yourselves, 
by  your  large  expenditure  for  pictures  of  mark,  of  the  power 
of  relieving  and  redeeming  this  distress  ; you  injure  the  paint- 
er whom  you  pay  so  largely  ; — and  what,  after  all,  have  you 
done  for  yourselves,  or  got  for  yourselves  ? It  does  not  in 
the  least  follow  that  the  hurried  work  of  a fashionable  painter 
will  contain  more  for  your  money  than  the  quiet  work  of  some 
unknown  man.  In  all  probability,  you  will  find,  if  you  rashly 
purchase  what  is  popular  at  a high  price,  that  you  have  got  one 
picture  you  don’t  care  for,  for  a sum  which  would  have  bought 
twenty  you  would  have  delighted  in.  For  remember  always 
that  the  price  of  a picture  by  a living  artist,  never  represents, 
never  can  represent,  the  quantity  of  labour  or  value  .in  it.  Its 
price  represents,  for  the  most  part,  the. degree  of.  desire  which 
the  rich  people  of  the  country  have  to  possess  it.  Once  get 


202 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


tlie  wealthy  classes  to  imagine  that  the  possession  of  pictures 
by  a given  artist  adds  to  their  “ gentility,”  and  there  is  no 
price  which  his  work  may  not  immediately  reach,  and  for 
years  maintain  ; and  in  buying  at  that  price,  you  are  not  get- 
ting value  for  your  money,  but  merely  disputing  for  victory 
in  a contest  of  ostentation.  And  it  is  hardly  possible  to 
spend  your  money  in  a worse  or  more  wasteful  way ; for 
though  you  may  not  be  doing  it  for  ostentation  yourself,  you 
are,  by  your  pertinacity,  nourishing  the  ostentation  of  others  ; 
you  meet  them  in  their  game  of  wealth,  and  continue  it  for 
them  ; if  they  had  not  found  an  opposite  player,  the  game 
would  have  been  done  ; for  a proud  man  can  find  no  enjoy- 
ment in  possessing  himself  of  what  nobody  disputes  with 
him.  So  that  by  every  farthing  you  give  for  a picture  beyond 
its  fair  price — that  is  to  say,  the  price  which  will  pay  the 
painter  for  his  time — you  are  not  only  cheating  yourself  and 
buying  vanity,  but  you  are  stimulating  the  vanity  of  others  ; 
paying,  literally,  for  the  cultivation  of  pride.  You  may  con- 
sider every  pound  that  you  spend  above  the  just  price  of  a 
work  of  art,  as  an  investment  in  a cargo  of  mental  quick-lime 
or  guano,  which,  being  laid  on  the  fields  of  human  nature,  is 
to  grow  a harvest  of  pride.  You  are  in  fact  ploughing  and 
harrowing,  in  a most  valuable  part  of  your  land,  in  order  to 
reap  the  whirlwind  ; you  are  setting  your  hand  stoutly  to 
Job’s  agriculture,  “Let  thistles  grow  instead  of  wheat,  and 
cockle  instead  of  barley.” 

Well,  but  you  will  say,  there  is  one  advantage  in  high  prices, 
which  more  than  counterbalances  all  this  mischief,  namely, 
that  by  great  reward  we  both  urge  and  enable  a painter  to 
produce  rather  one  perfect  picture  than  many  inferior  ones  : 
and  one  perfect  picture  (so  you  tell  us,  and  we  believe  it)  is 
worth  a great  number  of  inferior  ones. 

It  is  so  ; but  you  cannot  get  it  by  paying  for  it.  A great 
work  is  only  done  when  the  painter  gets  into  the  humour 
for  it,  likes  his  subject,  and  determines  to  paint  it  as  well 
as  he  can,  whether  he  is  paid  for  it  or  not ; but  bad  wurk, 
and  generally  the  worst  sort  of  bad  work,  is  done  when  he 
is  trying  to  produce  a showy  picture,  or  one  that  shal 


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203 


appear  to  have  as  much  labour  in  it  as  shall  be  worth  a high 
price.* 

There  is,  however,  another  point,  and  a still  more  important 
one,  bearing  on  this  matter  of  purchase,  than  the  keeping 
down  of  prices  to  a rational  standard.  And  that  is,  that  you 
pay  your  prices  into  the  hands  of  living  men,  and  do  not  pour 
them  into  coffins. 

For  observe  that,  as  we  arrange  our  payment  of  pictures  at 
present,  no  artist’s  work  is  worth  half  its  proper  value  while 
he  is  alive.  The  moment  he  dies,  his  pictures,  if  they  are 
good,  reach  double  their  former  value  ; but  that  rise  of  price 
represents  simply  a profit  made  by  the  intelligent  dealer  or 
purchaser  on  his  past  purchases.  So  that  the  real  facts  of  the 
matter  are,  that  the  British  public,  spending  a certain  sum 
annually  in  art,  determines  that,  of  every  thousand  it  pays, 
only  five  hundred  shall  go  to  the  painter,  or  shall  be  at  all 
concerned  in  the  production  of  art ; and  that  the  other  five 
hundred  shall  be  paid  merely  as  a testimonial  to  the  intelligent 
dealer,  who  knew  what  to  buy.  Now,  testimonials  are  very 
prettjr  and  proper  things,  within  due  limits  ; but  testimonials 
to  the  amount  of  a hundred  per  cent,  on  the  total  expenditure 
is  not  good  political  economy.  Do  not,  therefore,  in  general, 
unless  you  see  it  to  be  necessary  for  its  preservation,  buy  the 
picture  of  a dead  artist.  If  you  fear  that  it  may  be  exposed 

* When  this  lecture  was  delivered,  I gave  here  some  data  for  approx- 
imate estimates  of  the  average  value  of  good  modern  pictures  of  differ- 
ent classes ; but  the  subject  is  too  complicated  to  be  adequately  treated 
in  writing,  without  introducing  more  detail  than  the  reader  will  have 
patience  for.  But  I may  state  roughly,  that  prices  above  a hundred 
guineas  are  in  general  extravagant  for  water-colours,  and  above  five 
hundred  for  oils.  An  artist  almost  always  does  wrong  who  puts  more 
work  than  these  prices  will  remunerate  him  for  into  any  single  canvas 
—his  talent  would  be  better  employed  in  painting  two  pictures  than  one 
so  elaborate.  The  water-colour  painters  also  are  getting  into  the  habit 
of  making  their  drawings  too  large,  and  in  a measure  attaching  their 
price  rather  to  breadth  and  extent  of  touch  than  to  thoughtful  labour. 
Of  course  marked  exceptions  occur  here  and  there,  as  in  the  case  of 
John  Lewis,  whose  drawings  are  wrought  with  unfailing  precision 
throughout,  whatever  their  scale.  Hardly  any  price  can  be  remuner 
tive  for  such  work. 


204 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


to  contempt  or  neglect,  buy  it ; its  price  will  then,  probably, 
not  be  high  : if  you  want  to  put  it  into  a public  gallery,  buy 
it ; you  are  sure,  then,  that  you  do  not  spend  your  money 
selfishly  : or,  if  you  loved  the  man’s  work  while  he  was  alive, 
and  bought  it  then,  buy  it  also  now,  if  you  can  see  no  living 
work  equal  to  it.  But  if  you  did  not  buy  it  while  the  man 
was  living,  never  buy  it  after  he  is  dead  : you  are  then  doing 
no  good  to  him,  and  you  are  doing  some  shame  to  yourself. 
Look  around  you  for  pictures  that  you  really  like,  and  by 
buying  which  you  can  help  some  genius  yet  unperished — that 
is  the  best  atonement  you  can  make  to  the  one  you  have  neg- 
lected— and  give  to  the  living  and  struggling  painter  at  once 
wages,  and  testimonial. 

So  far  then  of  the  motives  which  should  induce  us  to  keep 
down  the  prices  of  modern  art,  and  thus  render  it,  as  a private 
possession,  attainable  by  greater  numbers  of  people  than  at 
present.  But  we  should  strive  to  render  it  accessible  to 
them  in  other  ways  also — chiefly  by  the  permanent  decora- 
tion of  public  buildings  ; and  it  is  in  this  field  that  I think  we 
may  look  for  the  profitable  means  of  providing  that  constant 
employment  for  young  painters  of  which  we  were  speaking 
last  evening. 

The  first  and  most  important  kind  of  public  buildings  which 
we  are  always  sure  to  want,  are  schools  : and  I would  ask  you 
to  consider  very  carefully,  whether  we  may  not  wisely  intro- 
duce some  great  changes  in  the  way  of  school  decoration. 
Hitherto,  as  far  as  I know,  it  has  either  been  so  difficult  to 
give  all  the  education  wTe  wanted  to  our  lads,  that  we  have 
been  obliged  to  do  it,  if  at  all,  with  cheap  furniture  in  bare 
walls  ; or  else  wre  have  considered  that  cheap  furniture  and 
bare  walls  are  a proper  part  of  the  means  of  education  ; and 
supposed  that  boys  learned  best  when  they  sat  on  hard  forms, 
and  had  nothing  but  blank  plaster  about  and  above  them 
whereupon  to  employ  their  spare  attention  ; also,  that  it  was 
as  well  they  should  be  accustomed  to  rough  and  ugly  con- 
ditions of  things,  partly  by  way  of  preparing  them  for  the 
hardships  of  life,  and  partly  that  there  might  be  the  least  pos- 
sible damage  done  to  floors  and  forms,  in  the  event  of  tlieii? 


ACCUMULATION  AND  DISTRIBUTION. 


20  5 

becoming,  during  the  master’s  absence,  the  fields  or  instru- 
ments of  battle.  All  this  is  so  far  well  and  necessary,  as  it  re- 
lates to  the  training  of  country  lads,  and  the  first  training  of 
boys  in  general.  But  there  certainly  comes  a period  in  the 
life  of  a well  educated  youth,  in  which  one  of  the  principal 
elements  of  his  education  is,  or  ought  to  be,  to  give  him  re- 
finement of  habits  ; and  not  only  to  teach  him  the  strong  ex- 
ercises of  which  his  frame  is  capable,  but  also  to  increase  his 
bodily  sensibility  and  refinement,  and  show  him  such  small 
matters  as  the  way  of  handling  things  properly,  and  treating 
them  considerately.  Not  only  so,  but  I believe  the  notion  of 
fixing  the  attention  by  keeping  the  room  empty,  is  a wholly 
mistaken  one  : I think  it  is  just  in  the  emptiest  room  that  the 
mind  wanders  most,  for  it  gets  restless,  like  a bird,  for  want 
of  a perch,  and  casts  about  for  any  possible  means  of  getting 
out  and  away.  And  even  if  it  be  fixed,  by  an  effort,  on  the 
business  in  hand,  that  business  becomes  itself  repulsive,  more 
than  it  need  be,  by  the  vileness  of  its  associations  ; and  many 
a study  appears  dull  or  painful  to  a boy,  when  it  is  pursued 
on  a blotted  deal  desk,  under  a wall  with  nothing  on  it  but 
scratches  and  pegs,  which  would  have  been  pursued  pleasantly 
enough  in  a curtained  corner  of  his  father’s  library,  or  at  the 
lattice  window  of  his  cottage.  Nay,  my  own  belief  is,  that  the 
best  study  of  all  is  the  most  beautiful  ; and  that  a quiet  glade 
of  forest,  or  the  nook  of  a lake  shore,  are  worth  all  the  school- 
rooms in  Christendom,  when  once  you  are  past  the  multipli- 
cation table  ; but  be  that  as  it  may,  there  is  no  question  at  all 
but  that  a time  ought  to  come  in  the  life  of  a well  trained 
youth,  when  he  can  sit  at  a writing  table  without  wanting  to 
throw  the  inkstand  at  his  neighbour  ; and  when  also  he  will 
feel  more  capable  of  certain  efforts  of  mind  with  beautiful  and 
refined  forms  about  him  than  with  ugly  ones.  When  that  time 
comes  he  ought  to  be  advanced  into  the  decorated  schools  ; 
and  this  advance  ought  to  be  one  of  the  important  and  hon- 
ourable epochs  of  his  life. 

I have  not  time,  however,  to  insist  on  the  mere  serviceable- 
neSs  to  our  youth  of  refined  architectural  decoration, -as  such  ; 
for  I want  you  to  consider  the  probable  influence  of  the  par- 


206 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


ticular  kind  of  decoration  which  I wish  3rou  to  get  for  them, 
namely,  historical  painting.  You  know  we  have  hitherto  been 
in  the  habit  of  conveying  all  our  historical  knowledge,  such 
as  it  is,  by  the  ear  only,  never  by  the  eye  ; all  our  notions  of 
things  being  ostensibly  derived  from  verbal  description,  not. 
from  sight.  Now,  I have  no  doubt  that  as  we  grow  gradually 
wiser — and  we  are  doing  so  every  day — we  shall  discover  at 
last  that  the  eye  is  a nobler  organ  than  the  ear ; and  that 
through  the  eye  we  must,  in  reality,  obtain,  or  put  into  form, 
nearly  all  the  useful  information  we  are  to  have  about  this 
world.  Even  as  the  matter  stands,  you  will  find  that  the 
knowledge  which  a boy  is  supposed  to  receive  from  verbal 
description  is  only  available  to  him  so  far  as  in  any  under- 
hand way  he  gets  a sight  of  the  thing  you  are  talking  about. 
I remember  well  that,  for  many  years  of  my  life,  the  only  no- 
tion I had  of  the  look  of  a Greek  knight  was  complicated  be- 
tween recollection  of  a small  engraving  in  my  pocket  Pope’s 
Homer,  and  reverent  study  of  the  Horse-Guards.  And  though 
I believe  that  most  boys  collect  flieir  ideas  from  more  varied 
sources,  and  arrange  them  more  carefully  than  I did ; still, 
whatever  sources  they  seek  must  always  be  ocular  : if  they  are 
clever  boys,  they  will  go  and  look  at  the  Greek  vases  and 
sculptures  in  the  British  Museum,  and  at  the  weapons  in  our 
armouries— -they  will  see  what  real  armour  is  like  in  lustre, 
and  what  Greek  armour  was  like  in  form,  and  so  put  a fairly 
true  image  together,  but  still  not,  in  ordinary  cases,  a very 
living  or  interesting  one.  Now,  the  use  of  your  decorative 
painting  would  be,  in  myriads  of  ways,  to  animate  their  his- 
tory for  them,  and  to  put  the  living  aspect  of  past  things  be- 
fore their  eyes  as  faithfully  as  intelligent  invention  can ; so 
that  the  master  shall  have  nothing  to  do  but  once,  to  point  to 
the  schoolroom  walls,  and  forever  afterwards  the  meaning  of 
any  word  would  be  fixed  in  a boy’s  mind  in  the  best  possible 
way.  Is  it  a question  of  classical  dress — what  a tunic  was 
like,  or  a chlamys,  or  a peplus?  At  this  day,  you  have  to 
point  to  some  vile  woodcut,  in  the  middle  of  a dictionary 
page,  representing  the  thing  hung  upon  a stick ; but  then, 
you  would  point  to  a hundred  figures,  wearing  the  actual 


accumulation  and  distribution. 


207 


dress,  in  its  fiery  colours,  in  all  tlie  actions  of  various  stateli- 
ness or  strength ; you  would  understand  at  once  how  it  fell 
round  the  people’s  limbs  as  they*stood,  how  it  drifted  from 
their  shoulders  as  they  went,  how  it  veiled  their  faces  as  they 
wept,  how  it  covered  their  heads  in  the  day  of  battle.  Now , 
if  you  want  to  see  what  a weapon  is  like,  you  refer,  in  like 
manner,  to  a numbered  page,  in  which  there  are  spear-heads 
in  rows,  and  sword-hilts  in  symmetrical  groups ; and  grad- 
ually the  boy  gets  a dim  mathematical  notion  how  one  scymi- 
tar  is  hooked  to  the  right  and  another  to  the  left,  and  one 
javelin  has  a knob  to  it  and  another  none  : while  one  glance 
at  your  good  picture  would  show’  him, — and  the  first  rainy 
afternoon  in  the  schoolroom  would  forever  fix  in  his  mind, — ■ 
the  look  of  the  sword  and  spear  as  they  fell  or  flew  ; and  how 
they  pierced,  or  bent,  or  shattered — how  men  wielded  them, 
and  how  men  died  by  them.  But  far  more  than  all  this,  is  it 
a question  not  of  clothes  or  weapons,  but  of  men?  how  can  we 
sufficiently  estimate  the  effect  on  the  mind  of  a noble  youth, 
at  the  time  -when  the  world  opens  to  him,  of  having  faithful 
and  touching  representations  put  before  him  of  the  acts  and 
presences  of  great  men — how  many  a resolution,  which  would 
alter  and  exalt  the  wdiole  course  of  his  after-life,  might  be 
formed,  when  in  some  dreamy  twilight  he  met,  through  his 
own  tears,  the  fixed  eyes  of  those  shadows  of  the  great  dead, 
unescapable  and  calm,  piercing  to  his  soul ; or  fancied  that 
their  lips  moved  in  dread  reproof  or  soundless  exhortation. 
And  if  but  for  one  out  of  many  this  were  true — if  yet,  in  a 
few,  you  could  be  sure  that  such  influence  had  indeed  changed 
their  thoughts  and  destinies,  and  turned  the  eager  and  reck- 
less youth,  who  would  have  cast  away  his  energies  on  the  race- 
horse or  the  gambling-table,  to  that  noble  life-race,  that  holy 
life-hazard,  which  should  win  all  glory  to  himself  and  all  good 
to  his  country — would  not  that,  to  some  purpose,  be  “politi- 
cal economy  of  art  ? ” 

And  observe,  there  could  be  no  monotony,  no  exhaustible- 
ness, in  the  scenes  required  to  be  thus  portrayed.  Even  if 
there  were,  and  you  wanted  for  every  school  in  the  kingdom, 
one  death  of  Leonidas  ; one  battle  of  Marathon  ; one  death  of 


208 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


Cleobis  and  Bito  ; there  need  not  therefore  be  more  monotony 
in  your  art  than  there  was  in  the  repetition  of  a given  cycle  of 
subjects  by  the  religious  pointers  of  Italy.  But  we  ought  not 
to  admit  a cycle  at  all.  For  though  we  had  as  many  great 
schools  as  we  have  great  cities  (one  day  I hope  we  shall  have), 
centuries  of  painting  would  not  exhaust,  in  all  the  number  of 
them,  the  noble  and  pathetic  subjects  which  might  be  chosen 
from  the  history  of  even  one  noble  nation.  But,  beside  this, 
you  will  not,  in  a little  while,  limit  your  youths’  studies  to  so 
narrow  fields  as  you  do  now.  There  will  come  a time — I am 
sure  of  it — when  it  will  be  found  that  the  same  practical  re- 
sults, both  in  mental  discipline,  and  in  political  philosophy, 
are  to  be  attained  by  the  accurate  study  of  mediae val  and 
modern  as  of  ancient  history ; and  that  the  facts  of  mediaeval 
and  modern  history  are,  on  the  whole,  the  most  important  to 
us.  And  among  these  noble  groups  of  constellated  schools 
which  I foresee  arising  in  our  England,  I foresee  also  that  there 
will  be  divided  fields  of  thought ; and  that  while  each  will  give 
its  scholars  a great  general  idea  of  the  world’s  history,  such  as 
all  men  should  possess — each  will  also  take  upon  itself,  as  its 
own  special  duty,  the  closer  study  of  the  course  of  events  in 
some  given  place  or  time.  It  will  review  the  rest  of  history, 
but  it  will  exhaust  its  own  special  field  of  it ; and  found  its 
moral  and  political  teaching  on  the  most  perfect  possible  analy- 
sis of  the  results  of  human  conduct  in  one  place,  and  at  one 
epoch.  And  then,  the  galleries  of  that  school  will  be  painted 
with  the  historical  scenes  belonging  to  the  age  which  it  has 
chosen  for  its  special  study. 

So  far,  then,  of  art  as  you  may  apply  it  to  that  great  series  of 
public  buildings  which  you  devote  to  the  education  of  youth. 
The  next  large  class  of  public  buildings  in  which  we  should 
introduce  it,  is  one  which  I think  a few  years  more  of  national 
progress  will  render  more  serviceable  to  us  than  they  have 
been  lately.  I mean,  buildings  for  the  meetings  of  guilds  of 
trades. 

And  here,  for  the  last  time,  I must  again  interrupt  the  course 
of  our  chief  inquiry,  in  order  to  state  one  other  principle  of 
political  economy,  which  is  perfectly  simple  and  indisputable ; 


ACCUMULATION  AND  DISTRIBUTION. 


200 


but  which,  nevertheless,  we  continually  get  into  commercial 
embarrassments  for  want  of  understanding  ; and  not  only  so, 
but  suffer  much  hindrance  in  our  commercial  discoveries,  be- 
cause many  of  our  business  men  do  not  practically  admit  it. 

Supposing  half  a dozen  or  a dozen  men  were  cast  ashore 
from  a wreck  on  an  uninhabited  island,  and  left  to  their  own 
resources,  one  of  course,  according  to  his  capacity,  would  be 
set  to  one  business  and  one  to  another  ; the  strongest  to  dig 
and  to  cut  wood,  and  to  build  huts  for  the  rest : the  most 
dexterous  to  make  shoes  out  of  bark  and  coats  out  of  skins  ; 
the  best  educated  to  look  for  iron  or  lead  in  the  rocks,  and 
to  plan  the  channels  for  the  irrigation  of  the  fields.  But 
though  their  labours  were  thus  naturally  severed,  that  small 
group  of  shipwrecked  men  would  understand  well  enough 
that  the  speediest  progress  was  to  be  made  by  helping  each 
other, — not  by  opposing  each  other : and  they  would  know 
that  this  help  could  only  be  properly  given  so  long  as  they 
were  frank  and  open  in  their  relations,  and  the  difficulties 
which  each  lay  under  properly  explained  to  the  rest.  So  that 
any  appearance  of  secresy  or  separateness  in  the  actions  of  any 
of  them  would  instantly,  and  justly,  be  looked  upon  with  sus- 
picion by  the  rest,  as  the  sign  of  some  selfish  or  foolish  pro- 
ceeding on  the  part  of  the  individual.  If,  for  instance,  the 
scientific  man  were  found  to  have  gone  out  at  night,  unknown 
to  the  rest,  to  alter  the  sluices,  the  others  would  think,  and  in 
all  probability  rightly  think,  that  he  wanted  to  get  the  best 
supply  of  water  to  his  own  field  ; and  if  the  shoemaker  re- 
fused to  show  them  where  the  bark  grew  which  he  made  the 
sandals  of,  they  would  naturally  think,  and  in  all  probability 
rightly  think,  that  he  didn’t  want  them  to  see  how  much  there 
was  of  it,  and  that  he  meant  to  ask  from  them  more  corn  and 
potatoes  in  exchange  for  his  sandals  than  the  trouble  of  mak- 
ing them  deserved.  And  thus,  although  each  man  would  have 
a portion  of  time  to  himself  in  which  he  was  allowed  to  do 
what  he  chose  without  let  or  inquiry, — so  long  as  he  was  work- 
ing in  that  particular  business  which  he  had  undertaken  for 
the  common  benefit,  any  secresy  on  his  part  would  be  imme- 
diately supposed  to  mean  mischief  ; and  would  require  to  be 


210 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


accounted  for,  or  put  an  end  to  : and  this  all  the  more  because 
whatever  the  work  might  be,  certainly  there  would  be  difficul- 
ties about  it  which,  when  once  they  were  well  explained,  might 
be  more  or  less  done  away  with  by  the  help  of  the  rest  ; so 
that  assuredly  every  one  of  them  would  advance  with  his  la- 
bour not  only  more  happily,  but  more  profitably  and  quickly, 
by  having  no  secrets,  and  by  frankly  bestowing,  and  frankly 
receiving,  such  help  as  lay  in  his  way  to  get  or  to  give. 

And,  just  as  the  best  and  richest  result  of  wealth  and  happi- 
ness to  the  whole  of  them,  would  follow  on  their  perseverance 
in  such  a system  of  frank  communication  and  of  helpful  la- 
bour ; — so  precisely  the  worst  and  poorest  result  would  bo 
obtained  by  a system  of  secresy  and  of  enmity  ; and  each 
mans  happiness  and  wealth  would  assuredly  be  diminished  in 
proportion  to  the  degree  in  which  jealousy  and  concealment 
became  their  social  and  economical  principles.  It  would  not, 
in  the  long  run,  bring  good,  but  only  evil,  to  the  man  of  sci- 
ence, if,  instead  of  telling  openly  where  he  had  found  good 
iron,  he  carefully  concealed  every  new  bed  of  it,  that  he  might 
ask,  in  exchange  for  the  rare  ploughshare,  more  corn  from  the 
farmer,  or  in  exchange  for  the  rude  needle,  more  labour  from 
the  sempstress : and  it  would  not  ultimately  bring  good,  but 
only  evil,  to  the  farmers,  if  they  sought  to  burn  each  other’s 
cornstacks,  that  they  might  raise  the  value  of  their  grain,  or 
if  the  sempstresses  tried  to  break  each  other’s  needles,  that 
each  might  get  all  the  stitching  to  herself. 

Now,  these  laws  of  human  action  are  precisely  as  authorita- 
tive in  their  application  to  the  conduct  of  a million  of  men,  as 
to  that  of  six  or  twelve.  All  enmity,  jealousy,  opposition,  and 
secresy  are  wholly,  and  in  all  circumstances,  destructive  in  their 
nature — not  productive ; and  all  kindness,  fellowship,  and  com- 
municativeness are  invariably  productive  in  their  operation, — 
not  destructive  ; and  the  evil  principles  of  opposition  and  ex- 
clusiveness are  not  rendered  less  fatal,  but  more  fatal,  by  their 
acceptance  among  large  masses  of  men  ; more  fatal,  I say,  ex- 
actly in  proportion  as  their  influence  is  more  secret.  For 
though  the  opposition  does  always  its  Own  simple,  necessary, 
direct  quantity  of  harm,  and  withdraws  always  its  own  simple5 


ACCUMULATION  AND  DISTRIBUTION 


211 


necessary,  measurable  quantity  of  wealth  from  the  sum  pos- 
sessed by  the  community,  yet,  in  proportion  to  the  size  of 
the  community,  it  does  another  and  more  refined  mischief 
than  this,  by  concealing*  its  own  fatality  under  aspects  of 
mercantile  complication  and  expediency,  and  giving  rise  to 
multitudes  of  false  theories  based  on  a mean  belief  in 
narrow  and  immediate  appearances  of  good  done  here  and 
there  by  things  which  have  the  universal  and  everlasting  nat- 
ure of  evil.  So  that  the  time  and  powers  of  the  nation  are 
wasted,  not  only  in  wretched  struggling  against  each  other, 
but  in  vain  complaints,  and  groundless  discouragements,  and 
empty  investigations,  and  useless  experiments  in  laws,  and 
elections,  and  inventions ; with  hope  always  to  pull  wisdom 
through  some  new-shaped  slit  in  a ballot-box,  and  to  drag 
prosperity  down  out  of  the  clouds  along  some  new  knot  of 
electric  wire ; while  all  the  while  Wisdom  stands  calling  at 
the  corners  of  the  streets,  and  the  blessing  of  heaven  waits 
ready  to  rain  down  upon  us,  deeper  than  the  rivers  and 
broader  than  the  dew,  if  only  we  will  obey  the  first  plain  prin- 
ciples of  humanity,  and  the  first  plain  precepts  of  the  skies  ; 
“Execute  true  judgment,  and  show  mercy  and  compassion, 
every  man  to  his  brother  ; and  let  none  of  you  imagine  evil 
against  his  brother  in  your  heart.”* 

* It  would  be  well  if,  instead  of  preaching  continually  about  the  doc- 
trine of  faitli  and  good  works,  our  clergymen  would  simply  explain  to 
their  people  a little  what  good  works  mean.  There  is  not  a chapter  in 
all  the  book  we  profess  to  believe,  more  specially,  and  directly  written 
for  England,  than  the  second  of  Kabakkuk,  and  I never  in  all  my  life 
heard  one  of  its  practical  texts  preached  from.  I suppose  the  clergymen 
are  all  afraid,  and  know  that  their  flocks,  while  they  will  sit  quite  po- 
litely to  hear  syllogisms  out  of  the  epistle  to  the  Romans,  would  get  rest- 
ive directly  if  they  ever  pressed  a practical  text  home  to  them.  But  we 
should  have  no  mercantile  catastrophes,  and  no  distressful  pauperism,  if 
we  only  read  often,  and  took  to  heart,  those  plain  words:  “Yea,  also, 
because  he  is  a proud  man,  neither  keepeth  at  home,  who  enlargeth  his 
desire  as  hell,  and  cannot  be  satisfied, — Shall  not  all  these  take  up  a 
parable  against  him,  and  a taunting  proverb  against  him,  and  say, 

‘ Woe  to  him  that  increaseth  that  which  is  not  his : and  to  him 
that  ladeth  himself  with  thick  day.’”  (What  a glorious  history,  in  one 
metaphor,  of  the  life  of  a man  greedy  of  fortune.)  “Woe  to  him  that 


212 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


Therefore,  I believe  most  firmly,  that  as  the  laws  of  national 
prosperity  get  familiar  to  us,  we  shall  more  and  more  cast  our 
toil  into  social  and  communicative  systems  ; and  that  one  of 
the  first  means  of  our  doing  so,  will  be  the  re-establishing 
guilds  of  every  important  trade  in  a vital,  not  formal,  condi- 
tion ; — that  there  will  be  a great  council  or  government  house 
for  the  members  of  every  trade,  built  in  whatever  town  of  the 
kingdom  occupies  itself  principally  in  such  trade,  with  minor 
council-halls  in  other  cities  ; and  to  each  council-hall,  officers 
attached,  whose  first  business  may  be  to  examine  into  the  cir- 
cumstances of  every  operative,  in  that  trade,  who  chooses  to 
report  himself  to  them  when  out  of  work,  and  to  set  him  to 
work,  if  he  is  indeed  able  and  willing,  at  a fixed  rate  of  wages, 
determined  at  regular  periods  in  the  council-meetings  ; and 
whose  next  duty  may  be  to  bring  reports  before  the  council 
of  all  improvements  made  in  the  business,  and  means  of  its 
extension  : not  allowing  private  patents  of  any  kind,  but  mak- 
ing all  improvements  available  to  every  member  of  the  guild, 
only  allotting,  after  successful  trial  of  them,  a certain  reward 
to  the  inventors. 

For  these,  and  many  other  such  purposes,  such  halls  will 
be  again,  I trust,  fully  established,  and  then,  in  the  paintings 
and  decorations  of  them,  especial  effort  ought  to  be  made  to 
express  the  worthiness  and  honourableness  of  the  trade  for 
whose  members  they  are  founded.  For  I believe  one  of  the 
worst  symptoms  of  modern  society  to  be,  its  notion  of  great 
inferiority,  and  ungentlemanliness,  as  necessarily  belonging 
to  the  character  of  a tradesman.  I believe  tradesmen  may  be, 
ought  to  be — often  are,  more  gentlemen  than  idle  and  useless 
people  : and  I believe  that  art  may  do  noble  work  by  record- 
ing in  the  hall  of  each  trade,  the  services  which  men  belong- 

coveteth  an  evil  covetousness  tliat  he  may  set  his  nest  on  high.  Woe  to 
him  that  buildeth  a town  witli  blood,  and  stablisheth  a city  by  iniquity. 
Behold,  is  it  not  of  the  Lord  of  Hosts  that  the  people  shall  labour  in  the 
very  fire,  and  the  people  shall  weary  themselves  for  very  vanity?” 

The  Americans,  who  have  been  sending  out  ships  with  sham  bolt- 
heads  on  their  timbers,  and  only  half  their  bolts,  may  meditate  on 
that  u buildeth  a town  with  blood.” 


accumulation  and  distribution. 


213 

ing  to  that  trade  have  done  for  their  country,  both  preserving 
the  portraits,  and  recording  the  important  incidents  in  the 
lives,  of  those  who  have  made  great  advances  in  commerce 
and  civilization.  I cannot  follow  out  this  subject,  it  branches 
too  far,  and  in  too  many  directions  ; besides,  I have  no  doubt 
you  will  at  once  see  and  accept  the  truth  of  the  main  princi- 
ple, and  be  able  to  think  it  out  for  yourselves.  I would  fain 
also  have  said  something  of  what  might  be  done,  in  the  same 
manner,  for  almshouses  and  hospitals,  and  for  what,  as  I shall 
try  to  explain  in  notes  to  this  lecture,  we  may  hope  to  see, 
some  day,  established  with  a different  meaning  in  their  name 
than  that  they  now  bear — workhouses ; but  I have  detained  you 
too  long  already,  and  cannot  permit  myself  to  trespass  further 
on  your  patience  except  only  to  recapitulate,  in  closing,  the 
simple  principles  respecting  wealth,  which  we  have  gathered 
during  the  course  of  our  inquiry  ; principles  which  are  noth- 
ing more  than  the  literal  and  practical  acceptance  of  the  say- 
ing, which  is  in  all  good  men’s  mouths  ; namely,  that  they  are 
stewards  or  ministers  of  whatever  talents  are  entrusted  to 
them.  Only,  is  it  not  a strange  thing,  that  while  we  more  or 
less  accept  the  meaning  of  that  saying,  so  long  as  it  is  con- 
sidered metaphorical,  we  never  accept  its  meaning  in  its  owrn 
terms  ? You  know  the  lesson  is  given  us  under  the  form  of  a 
story  about  money.  Money  wras  given  to  the  servants  to  make 
use  of : the  unprofitable  servant  dug  in  the  earth,  and  hid  his 
Lord’s  money.  Well,  we,  in  our  poetical  and  spiritual  appli- 
cation of  this,  say,  that  of  course  money  doesn’t  mean  money, 
it  means  wit,  it  means  intellect,  it  means  influence  in  high 
quarters,  it  means  everything  in  the  world  except  itself.  And 
do  not  you  see  what  a pretty  and  pleasant  come-off  there  is 
for  most  of  us,  in  this  spiritual  application  ? Of  course,  if  we 
had  wit,  we  would  use  it  for  the  good  of  our  fellow-creatures. 
But  we  haven’t  wit.  Of  course,  if  we  had  influence  with  the 
bishops,  we  would  use  it  for  the  good  of  the  Church  ; but  we 
haven’t  any  influence  with  the  bishops.  Of  course,  if  we  had 
political  power,  we  would  use  it  for  the  good  of  the  nation  ; 
but  we  have  no  political  power  ; we  have  no  talents  entrusted 
to  us  of  any  sort  or  kind.  It  is  true  we  have  a little  money, 


214 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


but  the  parable  can’t  possibly  mean  anything  so  vulgar  aa 
money  ; our  money’s  our  own. 

I believe,  if  you  think  seriously  of  this  matter,  you  will  feel 
that  the  first  and  most  literal  application  is  just  as  necessary 
a one  as  any  other — that  the  story  does  very  specially  mean 
what  it  says — plain  money  ; and  that  the  reason  we  don’t  at 
once  believe  it  does  so,  is  a sort  of  tacit  idea  that  while 
thought,  wit,  and  intellect,  and  all  power  of  birth  and  posi- 
tion, are  indeed  given  to  us,  and,  therefore,  to  be  laid  out  for 
the  Giver, — our  wealth  has  not  been  given  to  us ; but  we 
have  worked  for  it,  and  have  a right  to  spend  it  as  we  choose. 
I think  you  will  find  that  is  the  real  substance  of  our  under- 
standing in  this  matter.  Beauty,  we  say,  is  given  by  God — 
it  is  a talent ; strength  is  given  by  God — it  is  a talent ; posi- 
tion is  given  by  God — it  is  a talent  ; but  money  is  proper 
wages  for  our  day’s  work — it  is  not  a talent,  it  is  a due.  We 
may  justly  spend  it  on  ourselves,  if  we  have  worked  for  it. 

And  there  would  be  some  shadow  of  excuse  for  this,  were 
it  not  that  the  very  power  of  making  the  money  is  itself  only 
one  of  the  applications  of  that  intellect  or  strength  which  we 
confess  to  be  talents.  Why  is  one  man  richer  than  another  ? 
Because  he  is  more  industrious,  more  persevering,  and  more 
sagacious.  Well,  who  made  him  more  persevering  and  more 
sagacious  than  others  ? That  power  of  endurance,  that  quick- 
ness of  apprehension,  that  calmness  of  judgment,  which  en- 
able him  to  seize  the  opportunities  that  others  lose,  and  per- 
sist in  the  lines  cf  conduct  in  which  others  fail — are  these  not 
talents  ? — are  they  not  in  the  present  state  of  the  world,  among 
the  most  distinguished  and  influential  of  mental  gifts  ? And 
is  it  not  wonderful,  that  while  we  should  be  utterly  ashamed 
to  use  a superiority  of  body,  in  order  to  thrust  our  weaker 
companions  aside  from  some  place  of  advantage,  we  unhesi- 
tatingly use  our  superiorities  of  mind  to  thrust  them  back 
from  whatever  good  that  strength  of  mind  can  attain.  You 
would  be  indignant  if  you  saw  a strong  man  walk  into  a the- 
atre or  a lecture-room,  and,  calmly  choosing  the  best  place, 
take  his  feeble  neighbour  by  the  shoulder,  and  turn  him  out 
of  it  into  the  back  seats,  or  the  street.  You  would  be  equally 


ACCUMULATION  AND  DISTRIBUTION. 


215 


indignant  if  you  saw  a stout  fellow  thrust  himself  up  to  a 
table  where  some  hungry  children  were  being  fed,  and  reach 
his  arm  over  their  heads  and  take  their  bread  from  them.  But 
you  are  not  the  least  indignant  if  when  a man  has  stoutness 
of  thought  and  swiftness  of  capacity,  and,  instead  of  being 
long-armed  only,  has  the  much  greater  gift  of  being  long- 
headed— you  think  it  perfectly  just  that  he  should  use  his  intel- 
lect to  take  the  bread  out  of  the  mouths  of  all  the  other  men 
in  the  town  who  are  of  the  same  trade  with  him  ; or  use  his 
breadth  and  sweep  of  sight  to  gather  some  branch  of  the  com- 
merce of  the  country  into  one  great  cobweb,  of  which  he  is 
himself  to  be  the  central  spider,  making  every  thread  vibrate 
with  the  points  of  his  claws,  and  commanding  every  avenue 
with  the  facets  of  his  eyes.  You  see  no  injustice  in  this. 

But  there  is  injustice  ; and,  let  us  trust,  one  of  which  hon- 
ourable men  will  at  no  very  distant  period  disdain  to  be 
guilty.  In  some  degree,  however,  it  is  indeed  not  unjust ; in 
some  degree  it  is  necessary  and  intended.  It  is  assuredly  just 
that  idleness  should  be  surpassed  by  energy  ; that  the  widest 
influence  should  be  possessed  by  those  wrho  are  best  able  to 
wield  it ; and  that  a wise  man,  at  the  end  of  his  career,  should 
be  better  off  than  a fool.  But  for  that  reason,  is  the  fool  to 
be  wretched,  utterly  crushed  down,  and  left  in  all  the  suffer- 
ing which  his  conduct  and  capacity  naturally  inflict  ? — Not  so. 
What  do  you  suppose  fools  were  made  for  ? That  you  might 
tread  upon  them,  and  starve  them,  and  get  the  better  of  them 
in  every  possible  way  ? By  no  means.  They  were  made  that 
wise  people  might  take  care  of  them.  That  is  the  true  and 
plain  fact  concerning  the  relations  of  every  strong  and  wise 
man  to  the  world  about  him.  He  has  his  strength  given  him, 
not  that  he  may  crush  the  weak,  but  that  he  may  support 
and  guide  them.  In  his  own  household  he  is  to  be  the  guide 
and  the  support  of  his  children ; out  of  his  household  he  is 
still  to  be  the  father,  that  is,  the  guide  and  support  of  the 
weak  and  the  poor  ; not  merely  of  the  meritoriously  w^eak  and 
the  innocently  poor,  but  of  the  guiltily  and  punishably  poor  ; 
of  the  men  who  ought  to  have  known  better — of  the  poor  who 
ought  to  be  ashamed  of  themselves.  It  is  nothing  to  give  pen- 


210 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


sion  and  cottage  to  the  widow  who  has  lost  her  son  ; it  is 
nothing  to  give  food  and  medicine  to  the  workman  who  has 
broken  his  arm,  or  the  decrepit  woman  wasting  in  sickness. 
But  it  is  something  to  use  your  time  and  strength  to  war  with 
the  waywardness  and  thoughtlessness  of  mankind  ; to  keep 
the  erring  workman  in  your  service  till  you  have  made  him  an 
unerring  one  ; and  to  direct  your  fellow-merchant  to  the  op- 
portunity which  his  dulness  would  have  lost.  This  is  much ; 
but  it  is  yet  more,  when  you  have  fully  achieved  the  superior- 
ity which  is  due  to  you,  and  acquired  the  wealth  which  is  the 
fitting  reward  of  your  sagacity,  if  you  solemnly  accept  the  re- 
sponsibility of  it,  as  it  is  the  helm  and  guide  of  labour  far 
and  near.  For  you  who  have  it  in  your  hands,  are  in  reality 
the  pilots  of  the  power  and  effort  of  the  State.  It  is  entrusted 
to  you  as  an  authority  to  be  used  for  good  or  evil,  just  as  com- 
pletely as  kingly  authority  was  ever  given  to  a prince,  or  mil- 
itary command  to  a captain.  And,  according  to  the  quantity 
of  it  that  you  have  in  your  hands,  you  are  the  arbiters  of  the 
will  and  work  of  England  ; and  the  Tvhole  issue,  whether  the 
work  of  the  State  shall  suffice  for  the  State  or  not,  depends 
upon  you.  You  may  stretch  out  your  sceptre  over  the  heads 
of  the  English  labourers,  and  say  to  them,  as  they  stoop  to  its 
waving,  “ Subdue  this  obstacle  that  has  baffled  our  fathers, 
put  away  this  plague  that  consumes  our  children  ; water 
these  dry  places,  plough  these  desert  ones,  carry  this  food  to 
those  who  are  in  hunger  ; carry  this  light  to  those  who  are  in 
darkness  ; carry  this  life  to  those  who  are  in  death  ; ” or  on 
the  other  side  you  may  say  to  her  labourers : “Here  am  I ; 
this  power  is  in  my  hand  ; come,  build  a mound  here  for  me 
to  be  throned  upon,  high  and  wide  ; come,  make  crowns  for 
my  head,  that  men  may  see  them  shine  from  far  away  ; come, 
weave  tapestries  for  my  feet,  that  I may  tread  softly  on  the 
silk  and  purple  ; come,  dance  before  me,  that  I may  be  gay ; 
and  sing  sweetly  to  me,  that  I may  slumber ; so  shall  I live  in 
joy,  and  die  in  honour.”  And  better  than  such  an  honourable 
death,  it  were  that  the  day  had  perished  wherein  we  were 
born,  and  the  night  in  which  it  was  said  there  is  a child  con- 
ceived. 


ACCUMULATION  AND  DISTRIBUTION. 


217 


I trust  that  in  a little  while,  there  will  be  few  of  our  rich 
men  who,  through  carelessness  or  covetousness,  thus  forfeit 
the  glorious  office  which  is  intended  for  their  hands.  I said, 
just  now,  that  wealth  ill-used  was  as  the  net  of  the  spider,  en- 
tangling and  destroying  : but  wealth  well  used,  is  as  the  net 
of  the  sacred  fisher  who  gathers  souls  of  men  out  of  the  deep. 
A time  will  come — I do  not  think  even  now  it  is  far  from  us 
— when  this  golden  net  of  the  world’s  wealth  will  be  spread 
abroad  as  the  flaming  meshes  of  morning  cloud  are  over  the 
sky  ; bearing  with  them  the  joy  of  light  and  the  dew  of  the 
morning,  as  well  as  the  summons  to  honourable  and  peaceful 
toil.  What  less  can  we  hope  from  your  wealth  than  this, 
rich  men  of  England,  when  once  you  feel  fully  how,  by  the 
strength  of  your  possessions — not,  observe,  by  the  exhaustion, 
but  by  the  administration  of  them  and  the  power — you  can 
direct  the  acts, — command  the  energies — inform  the  igno- 
rance,— prolong  the  existence,  of  the  whole  human  race  ; and 
how,  even  of  worldly  wisdom,  which  man  employs  faithfully, 
it  is  true,  not  only  that  her  ways  are  pleasantness,  but  that 
her  paths  are  peace  ; and  that,  for  all  the  children  of  men,  as 
well  as  for  those  to  whom  she  is  given,  Length  of  days  are  in 
her  right  hand,  as  in  her  left  hand  Eiches  and  Honour  ? 


. *5  -■  r m 

> 2.M 


* 


ADDENDA. 


Note,  p.  150. — “ Fatherly  authority” 

This  statement  could  not,  of  course,  be  heard  without  dis- 
pleasure by  a certain  class  of  politicians  ; and  in  one  of  the 
notices  of  these  lectures  given  in  the  Manchester  journals  at 
the  time,  endeavour  was  made  to  get  quit  of  it  by  referring 
to  the  Divine  authority,  as  the  only  Paternal  power  with  re- 
spect to  which  men  were  truly  styled  “ brethren.”  Of  course 
it  is  so,  and,  equally  of  course,  all  human  government  is  noth- 
ing else  than  the  executive  expression  of  this  Divine  author- 
ity. The  moment  government  ceases  to  be  the  practical  en- 
forcement of  Divine  law,  it  is  tyranny  ; and  the  meaning  which 
I attach  to  the  words,  “ paternal  government,”  is  in  more 
extended  terms,  simply  this — “ The  executive  fulfilment,  by 
formal  methods,  of  the  will  of  the  Father  of  mankind  respect- 
ing His  children.”  I could  not  give  such  a definition  of  Gov- 
ernment as  this  in  a popular  lecture  ; and  even  in  written 
form,  it  will  necessarily  suggest  many  objections,  of  which  I 
must  notice  and  answer  the  most  probable. 

Only 3 in  order  to  avoid  the  recurrence  of  such  tiresome 
phrases  as  “ it  maj'  be  answered  in  the  second  place,”  and  it 
will  be  objected  in  the  third  place,”  &c.,  I will  ask  the  read- 
er’s leave  to  arrange  the  discussion  in  the  form  of  simple  dia- 
logue, letting  0.  stand  for  objector,  and  R.  for  response. 

0. — You  define  your  paternal  government  to  be  the  execu- 
tive fulfilment,  by  formal  human  methods,  of  the  Divine  will. 
But,  assuredly,  that  will  cannot  stand  in  need  of  aid  or  ex- 
pression from  human  laws.  It  cannot  fail  of  its  fulfilment. 

R< — In  the  final  sense  it  cannot  ; and  in  that  sense,  men 
who  are  committing  murder  and  stealing  are  fulfilling  the  will 


220 


A JOT  FOR  EVER. 


of  God  as  much  as  the  best  and  kindest  people  in  the  world. 
But  in  the  limited  and  present  sense,  the  only  sense  with 
which  we  have  anything  to  do,  God’s  will  concerning  man  is 
fulfilled  by  some  men,  and  thwarted  by  others.  And  those 
men  who  either  persuade  or  enforce  the  doing  of  it,  stand 
towards  those  who  are  rebellious  against  it  exactly  in  the 
position  of  faithful  children  in  a family,  who,  when  the  father 
is  out  of  sight,  either  compel  or  persuade  the  rest  to  do  as 
their  father  would  have  them,  were  he  present ; and  in  so  far 
as  they  are  expressing  and  maintaining,  for  the  time,  the  pa- 
ternal authority,  they  exercise,  in  the  exact  sense  in  which  I 
mean  the  phrase  to  be  understood,  paternal  government  over 
the  rest. 

O. — But,  if  Providence  has  left  a liberty  to  man  in  many 
things  in  order  to  prove  him,  why  should  human  law  abridge 
that  liberty,  and  take  upon  itself  to  compel  what  the  great 
Lawgiver  does  not  compel? 

R. — It  is  confessed,  in  the  enactment  of  any  law  whatso- 
ever, that  human  lawgivers  have  a right  to  do  this.  For,  if 
you  have  no  right  to  abridge  any  of  the  liberty  which  Provi- 
dence has  left  to  man,  you  have  no  right  to  punish  any  one  for 
committing  murder  or  robbery.  You  ought  to  leave  them  to 
the  punishment  of  God  and  Nature.  But  if  you  think  your- 
self under  obligation  to  punish,  as  far  as  human  laws  can,  the 
violation  of  the  will  of  God  by  these  great  sins,  you  are  cer- 
tainly under  the  same  obligation  to  punish,  with  proportion- 
ately less  punishment,  the  violation  of  His  will  in  less  sins. 

0. — No  ; you  must  not  attempt  to  punish  less  sins  by  law, 
because  you  cannot  properly  define  nor  ascertain  them. 
Everybody  can  determine  whether  murder  has  been  committed 
or  not,  but  you  cannot  determine  how  far  people  have  been 
unjust  or  cruel  in  minor  matters,  and  therefore  cannot  make 
or  execute  laws  concerning  minor  matters. 

R. — If  I propose  to  you  to  punish  faults  which  cannot  be 
defined,  or  to  execute  laws  which  cannot  be  made  equitable, 
reject  the  laws  I propose.  But  do  not  generally  object  to  the 
principle  of  law. 

0. — Yes  ; I generally  object  to  the  principle  of  law  as  ap- 


ADDENDA. 


221 


plied  to  minor  things ; because,  if  you  could  succeed  (which 
you  cannot)  in  regulating  the  entire  conduct  of  men  by  law 
in  little  things  as  well  as  great,  you  would  take  away  from 
human  life  all  its  probationary  character,  and  render  many 
virtues  and  pleasures  impossible.  You  would  reduce  virtue 
to  the  movement  of  a machine,  instead  of  the  act  of  a spirit. 

B. — You  have  just  said,  parenthetically,  and  I fully  and  will- 
ingly admit  it,  that  it  is  impossible  to  regulate  all  minor  mat- 
ters by  law.  Is  it  not  probable,  therefore,  that  the  degree  in 
which  it  is  possible  to  regulate  them  by  it,  is  also  the  degree 
in  which  it  is  right  to  regulate  them  by  it  ? Or  what  other 
means  of  judgment  will  you  employ,  to  separate  the  things 
which  ought  to  be  formally  regulated  from  the  things  which 
ought  not  ? You  admit  that  great  sins  should  be  legally  re- 
pressed ; but  you  say  that  small  sins  should  not  be  legally  re- 
pressed. How  do  you  distinguish  between  great  and  small 
sins  ; and  how  do  you  intend  to  determine,  or  do  you  in  prac- 
tice of  daily  life  determine,  on  what  occasion  you  should  com- 
pel people  to  do  right,  and  on  what  occasion  you  should  leave 
them  the  option  of  doing  wrong  ? 

0. — I think  you  cannot  make  any  accurate  or  logical  dis- 
tinction in  such  matters  ; but  that  common  sense  and  instinct 
have,  in  all  civilized  nations,  indicated  certain  crimes  of  great 
social  harmfulness,  such  as  murder,  theft,  adultery,  slander, 
and  such  like,  which  it  is  proper  to  repress  legally  ; and  that 
common  sense  and  instinct  indicate  also  the  kind  of  crimes 
which  it  is  proper  for  laws  to  let  alone,  such  as  miserliness, 
ill-natured  speaking,  and  many  of  those  commercial  dishones- 
ties which  I have  a notion  you  want  your  paternal  government 
to  interfere  with. 

U. — Pray  do  not  alarm  yourself  about  what  my  paternal 
government  is  likely  to  interfere  with,  but  keep  to  the  matter 
in  hand.  You  say  that  “ common  sense  and  instinct  ” have, 
in  all  civilized  nations,  distinguished  between  the  sins  that 
ought  to  be  legally  dealt  with  and  that  ought  not.  Do  you 
mean  that  the  laws  of  all  civilized  nations  are  perfect  ? 

0. — No  ; certainly  not. 

B. — Or  that  they  are  perfect  at  least  in  their  discrimination 


222 


A JOT  FOR  EVER. 


of  what  crimes  they  should  deal  with,  and  what  crimes  they 
should  let  alone  ? 

0. — No  ; not  exactly. 

R. — What  do  you  mean  then? 

0. — I mean  that  the  general  tendency  is  right  in  the  laws 
of  civilized  nations  ; and  that,  in  due  course  of  time,  natural 
sense  and  instinct  point  out  the  matters  they  should  be 
brought  to  bear  upon.  And  each  question  of  legislation  must 
be  made  a separate  subject  of  inquiry  as  it  presents  itself : 
you  cannot  fix  any  general  principles  about  what  should  be 
dealt  with  legally,  and  what  should  not. 

R. — Supposing  it  to  be  so,  do  you  think  there  are  any 
points  in  which  our  English  legislation  is  capable  of  amend- 
ment, as  it  bears  on  commercial  and  economical  matters,  in 
this  present  time  ? 

0. — Of  course  I do. 

R. — Well,  then,  let  us  discuss  these  together  quietly ; and 
if  the  points  that  I want  amended  seem  to  you  incapable  of 
amendment,  or  not  in  need  of  amendment,  say  so  : but  don’t 
object,  at  starting,  to  the  mere  proposition  of  applying  law  to 
tliiugs  which  have  not  had  law  applied  to  them  before.  You 
have  admitted  the  fitness  of  my  expression,  “paternal  govern- 
ment : ” it  only  has  been,  and  remains  a question  between  us, 
how  far  such  government  should  extend.  Perhaps  you  would 
like  it  only  to  regulate,  among  the  children,  the  length  of  their 
lessons  ; and  perhaps  I should  like  it  also  to  regulate  the 
hardness  of  their  cricket-balls  : but  cannot  you  wrait  quietly 
till  you  know  what  I want  it  to  do,  before  quarrelling  with 
the  thing  itself  ? 

0. — No  ; I cannot  wait  quietly  : in  fact  I don’t  see  any  use 
in  beginning  such  a discussion  at  all,  because  I am  quite  sure 
from  the  first,  that  you  want  to  meddle  with  things  that  you 
have  no  business  with,  and  to  interfere  with  healthy  liberty 
of  action  in  all  sorts  of  ways  ; and  I know  that  you  can’t  j>ro- 
pose  any  law's  that  would  be  of  real  use.* 

* If  tlie  reader  is  displeased  with  me  for  putting  this  foolish  speech 
into  his  mouth,  I entreat  his  pardon  ; but  he  maybe  assured  that  it  is  a 
speech  which  would  bs  made  by  many  people,  and  the  substance  of 


ADVENT)  A. 


223 


R. — If  you  indeed  know  that,  you  would  be  wrong  to  bear 
me  any  farther.  But  if  you  are  only  in  painful  doubt  about 
me,  which  makes  you  unwilling  to  run  the  risk  of  wasting 
your  time,  I will  tell  you  beforehand  what  I really  do  think 
about  this  same  liberty  of  action,  namely,  that  whenever  we 
can  make  a perfectly  equitable  law  about  any  matter,  or  even 
a law  securing,  on  the  whole,  more  just  conduct  than  unjust, 
•we  ought  to  make  that  law ; and  that  there  will  yet,  on  these 
conditions,  always  remain  a number  of  matters  respecting 
•which  legalism  and  formalism  are  impossible ; enough,  and 
more  than  enough,  to  exercise  all  human  powers  of  individual 
judgment,  and  afford  all  kinds  of  scope  to  individual  character. 
I think  this  ; but  of  course  it  can  only  be  proved  by  separate 
examination  of  the  possibilities  of  formal  restraint  in  each 
given  field  of  action  ; and  these  two  lectures  are  nothing  more 
than  a sketch  of  such  a detailed  examination  in  one  field, 
namely,  that  of  art.  You  will  find,  however,  one  or  tw'o  other 
remarks  on  such  possibilities  in  the  next  note. 


Note  2d,  p.  251. — “ Right  to  public  support” 

It  did  not  appear  to  me  desirable,  in  the  course  of  the 
spoken  lecture,  to  enter  into  details  or  offer  suggestions  on 
the  questions  of  the  regulation  of  labour  and  distribution  of 
relief,  as  it  would  have  been  impossible  to  do  so  without 
touching  on  many  disputed  or  disputable  points,  not  easily 
handled  before  a general  audience.  But  I must  now  supply 
what  is  wanting  to  make  my  general  statement  clear. 

I believe,  in  the  first  place,  that  no  Christian  nation  has  any 
business  to  see  one  of  its  members  in  distress  without  helping 
him,  though,  perhaps,  at  the  same  time  punishing  him  : help, 
of  course — in  nine  cases  out  of  ten — meaning  guidance,  much 
more  than  gift,  and,  therefore,  interference  wdth  liberty. 

which  would  he  tacitly  felt  by  many  more,  at  this  point  of  the  discus- 
sion. I have  really  tried,  up  to  this  point,  to  make  the  objector  as  in- 
telligent a person  as  it  is  possible  for  an  author  to  imagine  anybody  to 
be,  who  differs  with  him. 


224 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


"When  a peasant  mother  sees  one  of  her  careless  children  fall 
into  a ditch,  her  first  proceeding  is  to  pull  him  out ; her 
second,  to  box  his  ears  ; her  third,  ordinarily,  to  lead  him 
carefully  a little  way  by  the  hand,  or  send  him  home  for  the 
rest  of  the  day.  The  child  usually  cries,  and  very  often  would 
clearly  prefer  remaining  in  the  ditch  ; and  if  he  understood 
any  of  the  terms  of  politics,  would  certainly  express  resent- 
ment at  the  interference  with  his  individual  liberty  : but  the 
mother  has  done  her  duty.  Whereas  the  usual  call  of  the 
mother  nation  to  any  of  her  children,  under  such  circum- 
stances, has  lately  been  nothing  more  than  the  foxhunter’s, — - 
“Stay  still  there  ; I shall  clear  you.”  And  if  we  always  could 
clear  them,  their  requests  to  be  left  in  muddy  independence 
might  be  sometimes  allowed  by  kind  people,  or  their  cries  for 
help  disdained  by  unkind  ones.  But  we  can’t  clear  them. 
The  whole  nation  is,  in  fact,  bound  together,  as  men  are  by 
ropes  on  a glacier — if  one  falls,  the  rest  must  either  lift  him 
or  drag  him  along  with  them  * as  dead  weight,  not  without 
much  increase  of  danger  to  themselves.  And  the  lav/  of  right 
being  manifestly  in  this,  as,  whether  manifestly  or  not,  it  is 
always,  the  law  of  prudence,  the  only  question  is,  how  this 
wholesome  help  and  interference  are  to  be  administered. 

The  first  interference  should  be  in  education.  In  order  that 
men  may  be  able  to  support  themselves  when  they  are  grown, 
their  strength  must  be  properly  developed  while  they  are 
young ; and  the  state  should  always  see  to  this — not  allowing 
their  health  to  be  broken  by  too  early  labour,  nor  their  powers 
to  be  wasted  for  want  of  knowledge.  Some  questions  con- 
nected with  this  matter  are  noticed  farther  on  under  the  head 
“ trial  schools  : ” one  point  I must  notice  here,  that  I believe 
all  youths  of  whatever  rank,  ought  to  learn  some  manual  trade 
thoroughly  ; for  it  is  quite  wonderful  how  much  a man’s  views 

* It  is  very  curious  to  watch  the  efforts  of  two  shopkeepers  to  ruin  each 
other,  neither  having  the  least  idea  that  his  ruined  neighbour  must 
eventually  be  supported  at  his  own  expense,  with  an  increase  of  poor 
rates  ; and  that  the  contest  between  them  is  not  in  reality  which  shall 
get  everything  for  himself,  but  which  shall  first  take  upon  himself  and 
his  customers  the  gratuitous  maintenance  of  the  other’s  family. 


ADDENDA. 


225 


of  life  are  cleared  by  the  attainment  of  the  capacity  of  doing 
any  one  thing  well  with  his  hands  and  arms.  For  a long  time, 
what  right  life  there  was  in  the  upper  classes  of  Europe  de- 
pended in  no  small  degree  on  the  necessity  which  each  man 
was  under  of  being  able  to  fence  ; at  this  day,  the  most  use- 
ful things  which  boys  learn  at  public  schools,  are,  I believe, 
riding,  rowing,  and  cricketing.  But  it  would  be  far  better 
that  members  of  Parliament  should  be  able  to  plough  straight, 
and  make  a horseshoe,  than  only  to  feather  oars  neatly  or 
point  their  toes  prettily  in  stirrups.  Then,  in  literary  and 
scientific  teaching,  the  great  point  of  economy  is  to  give  the 
discipline  of  it  through  knowledge  which  will  immediately 
bear  on  practical  life.  Our  literary  work  has  long  been  econom- 
ically useless  to  us  because  too  much  concerned  with  dead 
languages  ; and  our  scientific  work  will  yet,  for  some  time,  be 
a good  deal  lost,  because  scientific  men  are  too  fond  or  too 
vain  of  their  systems,  and  waste  the  student’s  time  in  en- 
deavouring to  give  him  large  views,  and  make  him  perceive 
interesting  connections  of  facts  ; when  there  is  not  one  student, 
no,  nor  one  man,  in  a thousand,  who  can  feel  the  beauty  of  a 
system,  or  even  take  it  clearly  into  his  head ; but  nearly  all 
men  can  understand,  and  most  will  be  interested  in,  the  facts 
which  bear  on  daily  life.  Botanists  have  discovered  some 
wonderful  connection  between  nettles  and  figs,  which  a cow- 
boy who  will  never  see  a ripe  fig  in  his  life  need  not  be  at  all 
troubled  about ; but  it  will  be  interesting  to  him  to  know  what 
effect  nettles  have  on  hay,  and  what  taste  they  will  give  to  por- 
ridge ; and  it  will  give  him  nearly  a new  life  if  he  can  be  got 
but  once,  in  a spring-time,  to  look  well  at  the  beautiful  circlet 
of  the  white  nettle  blossom,  and  work  out  with  his  school- 
master the  curves  of  its  petals,  and  the  way  it  is  set  on  its 
central  mast.  So,  the  principle  of  chemical  equivalents,  beau- 
tiful as  it  is,  matters  far  less  to  a peasant  boy,  and  even  to 
most  sons  of  gentlemen,  than  their  knowing  how  to  find 
whether  the  water  is  wholesome  in  the  back-kitchen  cistern, 
or  whether  the  seven-acre  field  wants  sand  or  chalk. 

Having,  then,  directed  the  studies  of  our  youth  so  as  to 
make  them  practically  serviceable  men  at  the  time  of  their 


228 


A JOY  FOR  EVER 


entrance  into  life,  that  entrance  should  always  he  ready  foi 
them  in  cases  where  their  private  circumstances  present  no 
opening.  There  ought  to  be  government  establishments  for 
every  trade,  in  which  all  youths  who  desired  it  should  be  re- 
ceived as  apprentices  on  their  leaving  school ; and  men  thrown 
out  of  work  received  at  ail  times.  At  these  government 
manufactories  the  discipline  should  be  strict,  and  the  wages 
steady,  not  varying  at  all  in  proportion  to  the  demand  for  the 
article,  but  only  in  proportion  to  the  price  of  food  ; the  com- 
modities produced  being  laid  up  in  store  to  meet  sudden  de- 
mands, and  sudden  fluctuations  in  prices  prevented : — that 
gradual  and  necessary  fluctuation  only  being  allowed  which  is 
properly  consequent  on  larger  or  more  limited  supply  of  raw 
material  and  other  natural  causes.  When  there  was  a visible 
tendency  to  produce  a glut  of  any  commodity,  that  tendency 
should  be  checked  by  directing  the  youth  at  the  government 
schools  into  other  trades ; and  the  yearly  surplus  of  com- 
modities should  be  the  principal  means  of  government  pro- 
vision for  the  poor.  That  provision  should  be  large,  and  not 
disgraceful  to  them.  At  present  there  are  very  strange 
notions  in  the  public  mind  respecting  the  'receiving  of  alms  : 
most  people  are  willing  to  take  them  in  the  form  of  a pension 
from  government,  but  unwilling*  to  take  them  in  the  form  of  a 
pension  from  their  parishes.  There  may  be  some  reason  for 
this  singular  prejudice,  in  the  fact  of  the  government  pension 
being  usually  given  as  a definite  acknowledgment  of  some  ser- 
vice done  to  the  country  ; — but  the  parish  pension  is,  or 
ought  to  be,  given  precisely  on  the  same  terms.  A labourer 
serves  his  country  with  his  spade,  just  as  a man  in  the  middle 
ranks  of  life  serves  it  with  his  sword,  pen,  or  lancet ; if  the 
service  is  less,  and  therefore  the  wages  during  health  less, 
then  the  reward,  when  health  is  broken,  may  be  less,  but  not, 
therefore,  less  honourable  ; and  it  ought  to  be  quite  as  natural 
and  straightforward  a matter  for  a labourer  to  take  his  pen- 
sion from  his  parish,  because  he  has  deserved  well  of  his 
parish,  as  for  a man  in  higher  rank  to  take  his  pension  from 
his  country,  because  he  has  deserved  well  of  his  country.  If 
there  be  any  disgrace  in  coming  to  the  parish,  because  it  may 


ADDENDA. 


227 


imply  improvidence  in  early  life,  much  more  is  there  disgrace 
in  coming  to  the  government ; since  improvidence  is  far  less 
justifiable  in  a highly  educated  than  in  an  imperfectly  edu- 
cated man  ; and  far  less  justifiable  in  a high  rank,  where  ex- 
travagance must  have  been  luxury,  than  in  a low  rank,  where 
it  may  only  have  been  comfort.  So  that  the  real  fact  of  the 
matter  is,  that  people  will  take  alms  delightedly,  consisting  of 
a carriage  and  footmen,  because  those  do  not  look  like  alms 
to  the  people  in  the  street ; but  they  will  not  take  alms  con- 
sisting only  of  bread  and  water  and  coals,  because  everybody 
would  understand  what  those  meant.  Mind,  I do  not  want 
any  one  to  refuse  the  carriage  who  ought  to  have  it ; but 
neither  do  I want  them  to  refuse  the  coals.  I should  indeed 
be  sorry  if  any  change  in  our  views  on  these  subjects  involved 
the  least  lessening  of  self-dependence  in  the  English  mind  ; 
but  the  common  shrinking  of  men  from  the  acceptance  of 
public  charity  is  not  self-dependence,  but  mere  base  and  selfish 
pride.  It  is  not  that  they  are  unwilling  to  live  at  their  neigh- 
bours’ expense,  but  that  they  are  unwilling  to  confess  they 
do  ; it  is  not  dependence  they  wish  to  avoid,  but  gratitude. 
They  will  take  places  in  which  they  know  there  is  nothing  to 
be  done — they  will  borrow  money  they  know  they  cannot  re- 
pay— they  will  carry  on  a losing  business  with  other  people’s 
capital — they  will  cheat  the  public  in  their  shops,  or  sponge 
on  their  friends  at  their  houses  ; but  to  say  plainly  they  are 
poor  men,  who  need  the  nation’s  help,  and  go  into  an  alms- 
house— this  they  loftily  repudiate,  and  virtuously  prefer  being 
thieves  to  being  paupers. 

I trust  that  these  deceptive  efforts  of  dishonest  men  to  ap- 
pear independent,  and  the  agonizing  efforts  of  unfortunate 
men  to  remain  independent,  may  both  be  in  some  degree 
checked  by  a better  administration  and  understanding  of 
laws  respecting  the  poor.  But  the  ordinances  for  relief  and 
the  ordinances  for  labour  must  go  together  ; otherwise  distress 
caused  by  misfortune  will  always  be  confounded,  as  it  is  now, 
with  distress  caused  by  idleness,  un thrift,  and  fraud.  It  is 
only  when  the  state  watches  and  guides  the  middle  life  of 
men,  that  it  can,  without  disgrace  to  them,  protect  their  old 


228 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


age,  acknowledging  in  that  protection  that  they  have  done 
their  duty,  or  at  least  some  portion  of  their  duty,  in  better 
days. 

I know  well  how  strange,  fanciful,  or  impracticable  these 
suggestions  will  appear  to  most  of  the  business  men  of  this 
day  ; men  who  conceive  the  proper  state  of  the  world  to  be 
simply  that  of  a vast  and  disorganized  mob,  scrambling  each 
for  what  he  can  get,  trampling  down  its  children  and  old  men 
in  the  mire,  and  doing  what  work  it  finds  must  be  done  with 
any  irregular  squad  of  labourers  it  can  bribe  or  inveigle  to- 
gether, and  afterwards  scatter  to  starvation.  A great  deal 
may,  indeed,  be  done  in  this  way  by  a nation  strong-elbowed 
and  strong-hearted  as  we  are — not  easily  frightened  by  push- 
ing, nor  discouraged  by  falls.  But  it  is  still  not  the  right 
way  of  doing  things,  for  people  who  call  themselves  Chris- 
tians. Every  so  named  soul  of  man  claims  from  every  other 
such  soul,  protection  and  education  in  childhood — help  or 
punishment  in  middle  life — reward  or  relief,  if  needed,  in  old 
age  ; all  of  these  should  be  completely  and  unstintingly  given, 
and  they  can  only  be  given  by  the  organization  of  such  a sys- 
tem as  I have  described. 


Note  3rd,  p.  154. — “ Trial  Schools 

It  may  be  seriously  questioned  by  the  reader  how  much  of 
painting  talent  we  really  lose  on  our  present  system,*  and  how 
much  we  should  gain  by  the  proposed  trial  schools.  For  it 
might  be  thought,  that  as  matters  stand  at  present,  we  have 

* It  will  be  observed  tliat,  in  the  lecture,  it  is  assumed  that  works  of 
art  are  national  treasures  ; and  that  it  is  desirable  to  withdraw  all  the 
hands  capable  of  painting  or  carving  from  other  employments,  in  order 
that  they  may  produce  this  kind  of  wealth.  I do  not,  in  assuming  this, 
mean  that  works  of  art  add  to  the  monetary  resources  of  a nation,  or 
form  part  of  its  wealth,  in  the  vulgar  sense.  The  result  of  the  sale  of 
a picture  in  the  country  itself  is  merely  that  a certain  sum  of  money  is 
transferred  from  the  hands  of  B.  the  purchaser,  to  those  of  A.  the  pro- 
ducer ; the  sum  ultimately  to  be  distributed  remaining  the  same,  only 
A.  ultimately  spending  it  instead  of  B.,  while  the  labour  of  A.  has  been 
in  th 9 meantime  withdrawn  from  productive  channels ; he  lias  painted 


ADDENDA. 


229 


more  painters  than  we  ought  to  have,  having  so  many  bad 
ones,  and  that  ail  youths  who  had  true  painters’  genius  forced 
their  way  out  of  obscurity. 

This  is  not  so.  It  is  difficult  to  analyse  the  characters  of 
mind  which  cause  youths  to  mistake  their  vocation,  and  to 
endeavour  to  become  artists,  when  they  have  no  true  artist’s 
gift.  But  the  fact  is,  that  multitudes  of  young  men  do  this, 
and  that  by  far  the  greater  number  of  living  artists  are  men 
who  have  mistaken  their  vocation.  The  peculiar  circum- 
stances of  modern  life,  which  exhibit  art  in  almost  every  form 
to  the  sight  of  the  youths  in  our  great  cities,  have  a natural 
tendency  to  fill  their  imaginations  with  borrowed  ideas,  and 
their  minds  with  imperfect  science  ; the  mere  dislike  of 
mechanical  employments,  either  felt  to  be  irksome,  or  be- 

a picture  which  nobody  can  live  upon,  or  live  in.  when  he  might  have 
grown  corn  or  built  houses : when  the  sale  therefore  is  effected  in  the 
country  itself,  it  does  not  add  to,  but  diminishes,  the  monetary  resources 
of  the  country,  except  only  so  far  as  it  may  appear  probably,  on  other 
grounds,  that  A.  is  likely  to  spend  the  sum  he  receives  for  his  picture 
more  rationally  and  usefully  than  B.  would  have  spent  it.  If,  indeed, 
the  picture,  or  other  work  of  art,  be  sold  in  foreign  countries,  either  the 
money  or  the  useful  products  of  the  foreign  country  being  imported  in 
exchange  for  it,  such  sale  adds  to  the  monetary  resources  of  the  selling, 
and  diminishes  those  of  the  purchasing  nation.  But  sound  political 
economy,  strange  as  it  may  at  first  appear  to  say  so,  has  nothing  what- 
ever to  do  with  separations  between  national  interests.  Political  econo- 
my means  the  management  of  the  affairs  of  citizens ; and  in  either  re- 
gards exclusively  the  administration  of  the  affairs  of  one  nation,  or  the 
administration  of  the  affairs  of  the  world  considered  as  one  nation.  So 
when  a transaction  between  individuals  which  enriches  A.  impoverishes 
B.  in  precisely  the  same  degree,  the  sound  economist  considers  it  an  un- 
productive transaction  between  the  individuals,  and  if  a trade  between 
two  nations  which  enriches  one,  impoverishes  the  other  in  the  same  de- 
gree, the  sound  economist  considers  it  an  unproductive  trade  between 
the  nations  It  is  not  a general  question  of  political  economy,  but  only 
a particular  question  of  local  expediency,  whether  an  article  in  itself 
valueless,  may  bear  a value  of  exchange  in  transactions  with  some  other 
nation.  The  economist  considers  only  the  actual  value  of  the  thins: 

* i ° 

done  or  produced  ; and  if  he  sees  a quantity  of  labour  spent,  for  in- 
stance. by  the  Swiss,  in  producing  woodwork  for  sale  to  the  English,  he 
at  once  sets  the  commercial  impoverishment  of  the  English  purchaser 


230 


A JOT  FOR  EVER. 


lieved  to  be  degrading,  urges  numbers  of  young  men  to  be- 
come painters,  in  the  same  temper  in  which  they  would  enlist 
or  go  to  sea  ; others,  the  sons  of  engravers  or  artists,  taught 
the  business  of  the  art  by  their  parents,  and  having  no  gift 
for  it  themselves,  follow  it  as  the  means  of  livelihood,  in  an 
ignoble  patience  ; or,  if  ambitious,  seek  to  attract  regard,  or 
distance  rivalry,  by  fantastic,  meretricious,  or  unprecedented 
applications  of  their  mechanical  skill  ; while  finally,  many 
men  earnest  in  feeling,  and  conscientious  in  principle,  mistake 
their  desire  to  be  useful  for  a love  of  art,  and  their  quick- 
ness of  emotion  for  its  capacity,  and  pass  their  lives  in 
painting  moral  and  instructive  pictures,  which  might  almost 
justify  us  in  thinking  nobody  could  be  a painter  but  a rogue. 

against  tlie  commercial  enrichment  of  the  Swiss  seller ; and  considers 
the  whole  transaction  productive  only  so  far  as  the  woodwork  itself  is  a 
real  addition  to  the  wealth  of  the  world.  For  the  arrangement  of  the 
laws  of  a nation,  so  as  to  procure  the  greatest  advantages  to  itself,  and 
leave  the  smallest  advantages  to  other  nations,  is  not  a part  of  the  science 
of  political  economy,  but  merely  a broad  application  of  the  science  of 
fraud.  Considered  thus  in  the  abstract,  pictures  are  not  an  addition  to 
the  monetary  wealth  of  the  world,  except  in  the  amount  of  pleasure  or 
instruction  to  be  got  out  of  them  day  by  day  : but  there  is  a certain  pro- 
tective effect  on  wealth  exercised  by  works  of  high  art  which  must  al- 
ways be  included  in  the  estimate  of  their  value.  Generally  speaking, 
persons  who  decorate  their  houses  with  pictures  will  not  spend  so  much 
money  in  papers,  carpets,  curtains,  or  other  expensive  and  perishable 
luxuries  as  they  would  otherwise.  Works  of  good  art,  like  books,  exer- 
cise a conservative  effect  on  the  rooms  they  are  kept  in  ; and  the  wall 
of  the  library  or  picture  gallery  remains  undisturbed,  when  those  of 
other  rooms  are  re-papered  or  re-panelled.  Of  course  this  effect  is  still 
more  definite  when  the  picture  is  on  the  walls  themselves,  either  on 
canvas  stretched  into  fixed  shapes  on  their  panels,  or  in  fresco  ; involv- 
ing, of  course,  the  preservation  of  the  building  from  all  unnecessary  and 
capricious  alteration.  And  generally  speaking,  the  occup^fion  of  a large 
number  of  hands  in  painting  or  sculpture  in  any  nation  may  be  con- 
sidered as  tending  to  check  the  disposition  to  indulge  in  perishable  lux- 
ury. I do  not,  however,  in  my  assumption  that  works  of  art  are  treas- 
ures, take  much  into  consideration  this  collateral  monetary  result.  I 
consider  them  treasures,  merely  as  a permanent  means  of  pleasure  and 
instruction;  and  having  at  other  times  tried  to  show  the  several  ways 
in  which  they  can  please  and  teach,  assume  here  that  they  are  thus  use- 
ful ; and  that  it  is  desirable  to  make  as  many  painters  as  we  can. 


ADDENDA, . 


231 


On  tlie  other  hand,  I believe  that  much  of  the  best  artistical 
intellect  is  daily  lost  in  other  avocations.  Generally,  the 
temper  which  would  make  an  admirable  artist  is  humble  and 
observant,  capable  of  taking  much  interest  in  little  things, 
and  of  entertaining  itself  pleasantly  in  the  dullest  circum- 
stances. Suppose,  added  to  these  characters,  a steady  con- 
scientiousness which  seeks  to  do  its  duty  wherever  it  may  be 
placed,  and  the  power,  denied  to  few  artistical  minds,  of 
ingenious  invention  in  almost  any  practical  department  of 
human  skill,  and  it  can  hardly  be  doubted  that  the  very  hu- 
mility and  conscientiousness  which  would  have  perfected  the 
painter,  have  in  many  instances  prevented  his  becoming  one  ; 
and  that  in  the  quiet  life  of  our  steady  craftsmen — sagacious 
manufacturers,  and  uncomplaining  clerks — there  may  fre- 
quently be  concealed  more  genius  than  ever  is  raised  to  the 
direction  of  our  public  works,  or  to  be  the  mark  of  our  public 
praises. 

It  is  indeed  probable,  that  intense  disposition  for  art  will 
conquer  the  most  formidable  obstacles,  if  the  surrounding 
circumstances  are  such  as  at  all  to  present  the  idea  of  such 
conquest  to  the  mind  ; but  we  have  no  ground  for  concluding 
that  Giotto  would  ever  have  been  more  than  a shepherd,  if 
Cimabue  had  not  by  chance  found  him  drawing ; or  that 
among  the  shepherds  of  the  Apennines  there  were  no  other 
Giottos,  undiscovered  by  Cimabue.  We  are  too  much  in  the 
habit  of  considering  happy  accidents  as  what  are  called  “ special 
Providences  ; ” and  thinking  that  when  any  great  work  needs 
to  be  done,  the  man  who  is  to  do  it  will  certainly  be  pointed 
out  by  Providence,  be  he  shepherd  or  sea-boy ; and  prepared 
for  his  work  by  all  kinds  of  minor  providences,  in  the  best 
possible  way.  Whereas  all  the  analogies  of  God’s  operations 
in  other  matters  prove  the  contrary  of  this  ; we  find  that  “ of 
thousand  seeds,  He  often  brings  but  one  to  bear,”  often  not 
one  ; and  the  one  seed  which  He  appoints  to  bear  is  allowed 
to  bear  crude  or  perfect  fruit  according  to  the  dealings  of  the 
husbandman  with  it.  And  there  cannot  be  a doubt  in  the 
mind  of  any  person  accustomed  to  take  broad  and  logical 
views  of  the  world’s  history,  that  its  events  are  ruled  by 


232 


A JOY  FOP,  EVER. 

Providence  in  precisely  the  same  manner  as  its  harvests  ; that 
the  seeds  of  good  and  evil  are  broadcast  among  men,  just  as 
the  seeds  of  thistles  and  fruits  are  ; and  that  according  to  the 
force  of  our  industry,  and  wisdom  of  our  husbandry,  the 
ground  will  bring  forth  to  us  figs  or  thistles.  So  that  when 
it  seems  needed  that  a certain  work  should  be  done  for  the 
world,  and  no  man  is  there  to  do  it,  we  have  no  right  to  say 
that  God  did  not  wish  it  to  be  done  ; and  therefore  sent  no 
man  able  to  do  it.  The  probability  (if  I wrote  my  own  con- 
victions, I should  say  certainty)  is,  that  He  sent  many  men, 
hundreds  of  men,  able  to  do  it ; and  that  we  have  rejected 
them,  or  crushed  them  ; by  our  previous  folly  of  conduct  or 
of  institution,  we  have  rendered  it  impossible  to  distinguish,  or 
impossible  to  reach  them  ; and  when  the  need  for  them  comes, 
and  we  suffer  for  the  want  of  them,  it  is  not  that  God  refuses 
to  send  us  deliverers,  and  especially  appoints  all  our  consequent 
sufferings  ; but  that  He  has  sent,  and  we  have  refused,  the 
deliverers ; and  the  pain  is  then  wrought  out  by  His  eternal 
law,  as  surely  as  famine  is  wrought  out  by  eternal  law  for  a 
nation  which  will  neither  plough  nor  sow.  No  less  are  we  in 
error  in  supposing,  as  we  so  frequently  do,  that  if  a man  be 
found,  he  is  sure  to  be  in  all  respects  fitted  for  the  work  to  be 
done,  as  the  key  is  to  the  lock  : and  that  every  accident  which 
happened  in  the  forging  him,  only  adapted  him  more  truly  to 
the  wards.  It  is  pitiful  to  hear  historians  beguiling  them- 
selves and  their  readers,  by  tracing  in  the  early  history  of 
great  men,  the  minor  circumstances  which  fitted  them  for  the 
work  they  did,  without  ever  taking  notice  of  the  other  cir- 
cumstances which  as  assuredly  unfitted  them  for  it ; so  con- 
cluding that  miraculous  interposition  prepared  them  in  all 
points  for  everything,  and  that  they  did  all  that  could  have 
been  desired  or  hoped  for  from  them  : whereas  the  certainty 
of  the  matter  is  that,  throughout  their  lives,  they  were 
thwarted  and  corrupted  by  some  things  as  certainly  as  they 
were  helped  and  disciplined  by  others  ; and  that,  in  the  kind- 
liest and  most  reverent  view  which  can  justly  be  taken  of 
them,  they  were  but  poor  mistaken  creatures,  struggling  with 
a world  more  profoundly  mistaken  than  they  ; assuredly 


ADDENDA. 


233 


sinned  against,  or  sinning  in  thousands  of  ways,  and  bringing 
out  at  last  a maimed  result — not  what  tliey  might  or  ought  to 
have  done,  but  all  that  could  be  done  against  the  world’s  re- 
sistance, and  in  spite  of  their  own  sorrowful  falsehood  to 
themselves. 

And  this  being  so,  it  is  the  practical  duty  of  a wise  nation, 
first  to  withdraw,  as  far  as  may  be,  its  youth  from  destructive 
influences  ; — then  to  try  its  material  as  far  as  possible,  and  to 
lose  the  use  of  none  that  is  good.  I do  not  mean  by  “ with- 
drawing from  destructive  influences  ” the  keeping  of  youths 
out  of  trials  ; but  the  keeping  them  out  of  the  way  of  things 
purely  and  absolutely  mischievous.  I do  not  mean  that  we 
should  shade  our  green  corn  in  all  heat,  and  shelter  it  in  all 
frost,  but  only  that  we  should  dyke  out  the  inundation  from 
it,  and  drive  the  fowls  away  from  it.  Let  your  youth  labour 
and  suffer  ; but  do  not  let  it  starve,  nor  steal,  nor  blaspheme. 

It  is  not,  of  course,  in  my  power  here  to  enter  into  details 
of  schemes  of  education ; and  it  will  be  long  before  the  re- 
sults of  experiments  now  in  progress  will  give  data  for  the 
solution  of  the  most  difficult  questions  connected  with  the 
subject,  of  which  the  principal  one  is  the  mode  in  which  the 
chance  of  advancement  in  life  is  to  be  extended  to  all,  and 
yet  made  compatible  with  contentment  in  the  pursuit  of  lower 
avocations  by  those  whose  abilities  do  not  qualify  them 
for  the  higher.  But  the  general  principle  of  trial  schools  lies 
at  the  root  of  the  matter — of  schools,  that  is  to  say,  in  which 
the  knowledge  offered  and  discipline  enforced  shall  be  all  apart, 
of  a great  assay  of  the  human  soul,  and  in  which  the  one  shall 
be  increased,  the  other  directed,  as  the  tried  heart  and  brain 
will  best  bear,  and  no  otherwise.  One  thing,  however,  I must 
say,  that  in  this  trial  I believe  all  emulation  to  be  a false  mo- 
tive, and  all  giving  of  prizes  a false  means.  All  that  you  can 
depend  upon  in  a boy,  as  significative  of  true  power,  likely 
to  issue  in  good  fruit,  is  his  will  to  work  for  the  work’s  sake, 
not  his  desire  to  surpass  his  school-fellows ; and  the  aim  of 
the  teaching  you  give  him  ought  to  be,  to  prove  to  him  and 
strengthen  in  him  his  own  separate  gift,  not  to  puff  him  into 
swollen  rivalry  with  those  who  are  everlastingly  greater  than 


234 


A JOT  FOR  EVER . 


he  : still  less  ought  you  to  hang  favours  and  ribands  about 
the  neck  of  the  creature  who  is  the  greatest,  to  make  the 
rest  envy  him.  Try  to  make  them  love  him  and  follow  him, 
not  struggle  with  him. 

There  must,  of  course,  be  examination  to  ascertain  and  at- 
test both  progress  and  relative  capacity ; but  our  aim  should 
be  to  make  the  students  rather  look  upon  it  as  a means  of  as- 
certaining their  own  true  positions  and  powers  in  the  world, 
than  as  an  arena  in  which  to  carry  away  a present  victory.  I 
have  not,  perhaps,  in  the  course  of  the  lecture,  insisted 
enough  on  the  nature  of  relative  capacity  and  individual  char- 
acter, as  the  roots  of  all  real  value  in  Art.  We  are  too  much 
in  the  habit,  in  these  daj's,  of  acting  as  if  Art  worth  a price 
in  the  market  were  a commodity  which  people  eould  be  gen- 
erally taught  to  produce,  and  as  if  the  education  of  the  artist, 
not  his  capacity,  gave  the  sterling  value  to  his  work.  No  im- 
pression can  possibly  be  more  absurd  or  false.  Whatever 
people  can  teach  each  other  to  do,  they  will  estimate,  and 
ought  to  estimate,  only  as  common  industry  ; nothing  will 
ever  fetch  a high  price  but  precisely  that  which  cannot  be 
taught,  and  which  nobody  can  do  but  the  man  from  whom  it 
is  purchased.  No  state  of  society,  nor  stage  of  knowledge, 
ever  does  away  with  the  natural  pre-eminence  of  one  man 
over  another;  and  it  is  that  pre-eminence,  and  that  only, 
which  will  give  work  high  value  in  the  market,  or  which 
ought  to  do  so.  It  is  a bad  sign  of  the  judgment,  and  bad 
omen  for  the  progress,  of  a nation,  if  it,  supposes  itself  to 
possess  many  artists  of  equal  merit.  Noble  art  is  nothing 
less  than  the  expression  of  a great  soul ; and  great  souls  are 
not  common  things.  If  ever  we  confound  their  work  with 
that  of  others,  it  is  not  through  liberality,  but  through  blind- 
ness. 


Note  4th,  p.  155 . — “Public  favour .” 

There  is  great  difficulty  in  making  any  short  or  general 
statement  of  the  difference  between  great  and  ignoble  minda 
in  their  behaviour  to  the  “ public.”  It  is  by  no  means  uni - 


ADDENDA. 


235 


versaliy  the  case  that  a mean  mind,  as  stated  in  the  text,  will 
bend  itself  to  what  you  ask  of  it : on  the  contrary,  there  is 
one  kind  of  mind,  the  meanest  of  all,  which  perpetually  com- 
plains of  the  public,  contemplates  and  proclaims  itself  as  a 
4 ‘ genius,”  refuses  all  wholesome  discipline  or  humble  office, 
and  ends  in  miserable  and  revengeful  ruin  ; also,  the  greatest 
minds  are  marked  by  nothing  more  distinctly  than  an  incon- 
ceivable humility,  and  acceptance  of  work  or  instruction  in 
any  form,  and  from  any  quarter.  They  will  learn  from  every- 
body,  and  do  anything  that  anybody  asks  of  them,  so  long  as 
it  involves  only  toil,  or  what  other  men  would  think  degrada- 
tion. But  the  point  of  quarrel,  nevertheless,  assuredly  rises 
some  day  between  the  public  and  them,  respecting  some  mat- 
ter, not  of  humiliation,  but  of  Fact.  Your  great  man  always 
at  last  comes  to  see  something  the  public  don’t  see.  This 
something  he  will  assuredly  persist  in  asserting,  whether  with 
tongue  or  pencil,  to  be  as  he  sees  it,  not  as  they  see  it ; and 
all  the  world  in  a heap  on  the  other  side,  will  not  get  him  to 
say  otherwise.  Then,  if  the  world  objects  to  the  saying,  he 
may  happen  to  get  stoned  or  burnt  for  it,  but  that  does  not 
in  the  least  matter  to  him  : if  the  world  has  no  particular  ob- 
jection to  the  saying,  he  may  get  leave  to  mutter  it  to  himself 
till  he  dies,  and  be  merely  taken  for  an  idiot ; that  also  does 
not  matter  to  him — mutter  it  he  will,  according  to  what  he 
perceives  to  be  fact,  and  not  at  all  according  to  the  roaring  of 
the  walls  of  Red  sea  on  the  right  hand  or  left  of  him.  Hence 
the  quarrel,  sure  at  some  time  or  other,  to  be  started  between 
the  public  and  him  ; while  your  mean  man,  though  he  will 
spit  and  scratch  spiritedly  at  the  public,  while  it  does  not  at- 
tend to  him,  will  bow  to  it  for  its  clap  in  any  direction,  and 
say  anything  when  he  has  got  its  ear,  which  he  thinks  will 
bring  him  another  clap  ; and  thus,  as  stated  in  the  text,  he 
and  it  go  on  smoothly  together. 

There  are,  however,  times  when  the  obstinacy  of  the  mean 
man  looks  very  like  the  obstinacy  of  tbe  great  one  ; but  if 
you  look  closely  into  the  matter,  you  will  always  see  that  the 
obstinacy  of  the  first  is  in  the  pronunciation  of  “ I ; ” and  of 
the  second,  in  the  pronunciation  of  “ It.” 


28  6 


H JOF  AWf  EVER. 


Note  5th,  p.  169. — “ Invention  of  new  wants.” 

It  would  have  been  impossible  for  political  economists  long 
to  have  endured  the  error  spoken  of  in  the  text,*  had  they 
not  been  confused  by  an  idea,  in  part  well  founded,  that  the 
energies  and  refinements,  as  well  as  the  riches  of  civilized  life, 
arose  from  imaginary  wants.  It  is  quite  true,  that  the  savage 
who  knows  no  needs  but  those  of  food,  shelter,  and  sleep,  and 
after  he  has  snared  his  venison  and  patched  the  rents  of  his 
hut,  passes  the  rest  of  his  time  in  animal  repose,  is  in  a lower 
state  than  the  man  who  labours  incessantly  that  he  may  pro- 
cure for  himself  the  luxuries  of  civilization  ; and  true  also, 
that  the  difference  between  one  and  another  nation  in  pro- 
gressive power  depends  in  great  part  on  vain  desires  ; but 
these  idle  motives  are  merely  to  be  considered  as  giving  exer- 
cise to  the  national  body  and  mind  ; they  are  not  sources  of 
wealth,  except  so  far  as  they  give  the  habits  of  industry  and 
acquisitiveness.  If  a boy  is  clumsy  and  lazy,  we  shall  do 

* I have  given  the  political  economists  too  much  credit  in  saying  this. 
Actually,  while  these  sheets  are  passing  through  the  press,  the  blunt, 
broad,  unmitigated  fallacy  is  enunciated,  formally  and  precisely,  by  the 
common  councilmen  of  New  York,  in  their  report  on  the  present  com- 
mercial crisis.  Here  is  their  collective  opinion,  published  in  the  Times 
of  November  23rd,  1857  : — “ Another  erroneous  idea  is  that  luxurious 
living,  extravagant  dressing,  splendid  turn-outs  and  fine  houses,  are  the 
cause  of  distress  to  a nation.  No  more  erroneous  impression  could  ex- 
ist. Every  extravagance  that  the  man  of  100,000  or  1,000,000  dollars 
indulges  in  adds  to  the  means,  the  support,  the  wealth  of  ten  or  a hun- 
dred who  had  little  or  nothing  else  but  their  labour,  their  intellect,  or 
their  taste.  If  a man  of  1,000,000  dollars  spends  principal  and  interest 
in  ten  years,  and  finds  himself  beggared  at  the  end  of  that  time,  lie  has 
actually  made  a hundred  who  have  catered  to  his  extravagance,  employ- 
ers or  employed,  so  much  the  richer  by  the  division  of  his  wealth.  He 
may  be  ruined,  but  the  nation  is  better  off  and  richer,  for  one  hundred 
minds  and  hands,  with  10,000  dollars  apiece,  are  far  more  productive 
than  one  with  the  whole  ” 

Yes,  gentlemen  of  the  common  council ; but  what  has  been  doing  in  the 
time  of  the  transfer  ? The  spending  of  the  fortune  has  taken  a certain 
number  of  years  (suppose  ten),  and  during  that  time  1,000,000  dollars 
worth  of  work  has  been  done  by  the  people,  who  have  been  paid  that 
sum  for  it.  Where  is  the  product  of  that  work  ? By  your  own  state 


ADDENDA. 


237 


good  if  we  can  persuade  him  to  carve  cherry-stones  and  fly 
kites  ; and  this  use  of  his  fingers  and  limbs  may  eventually  be 
the  cause  of  his  becoming  a wealthy  and  happy  man  ; but  we 
must  not  therefore  argue  that  cherry-stones  are  valuable  prop- 
erty, or  that  kite-flying  is  a profitable  mode  of  passing  time. 
In  like  manner,  a nation  always  wastes  its  time  and  labour 
directly , when  it  invents  a newr  want  of  a frivolous  kind,  and 
yet  the  invention  of  such  a want  may  be  the  sign  of  a healthy 
activity,  and  the  labour  undergone  to  satisfy  the  new  want 
may  lead,  indirectly , to  useful  discoveries  or  to  noble  arts ; so 
that  a nation  is  not  to  be  discouraged  in  its  fancies  when  it  is 
either  too  weak  or  foolish  to  be  moved  to  exertion  by  anything 
but  fancies,  or  has  attended  to  its  serious  business  first.  If  a 
nation  will  not  forge  iron,  but  likes  distilling  lavender,  by  all 
means  give  it  lavender  to  distil  ; only  do  not  let  its  econo- 
mists suppose  that  lavender  is  as  profitable  to  it  as  oats,  or 
that  it  helps  poor  people  to  live,  any  more  than  the  school- 
boy’s kite  provides  him  his  dinner.  Luxuries,  whether  na- 
tional or  personal,  must  be  paid  for  by  labour  withdrawn 
from  useful  things  ; and  no  nation  has  a right  to  indulge  in 
them  until  all  its  poor  are  comfortably  housed  and  fed. 

The  enervating  influence  of  luxury,  and  its  tendencies  to  in- 
crease vice,  are  points  which  I keep  entirely  out  of  considera- 
tion in  the  present  essay : but,  so  far  as  they  bear  on  any 
question  discussed,  they  merely  furnish  additional  evidence  on 

ment,  wholly  consumed  ; for  the  man  for  whom  it  has  been  done  is  now 
a beggar.  You  have  given  therefore,  as  a nation.  1,000,000  dollars  worth 
of  work,  and  ten  years  of  time,  and  you  have  produced,  as  ultimate  re- 
sult, one  beggar  ! Excellent  economy,  gentlemen  ; and  sure  to  conduce, 
in  due  sequence,  to  the  production  of  more  than  one  beggar.  Perhaps 
the  matter  may  be  made  clearer  to  you,  however,  by  a more  familiar 
instance.  If  a schoolboy  goes  out  in  the  morning  with  five  shillings 
in  his  pocket,  and  comes  home  at  night  penniless,  having  spent  his 
all  in  tarts,  principal  and  interest  are  gone,  and  fruiterer  and  baker  are 
enriched.  So  far  so  good.  But  suppose  the  schoolboy,  instead,  has 
bought  a book  and  a knife  ; principal  and  interest  are  gone,  and  book- 
seller and  cutler  are  enriched.  But  the  schoolboy  is  enriched  also,  and 
may  help  his  schoolfellows  next  day  with  knife  and  book,  instead  of 
lying  in  bed  and  incurring  a debt  to  the  doctor. 


238 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


the  side  which  I have  taken.  Thus,  in  the  present  case,  I assume 
that  the  luxuries  of  civilized  life  are  in  possession  harmless, 
and  in  acquirement,  serviceable  as  a motive  for  exertion  ; and 
even  on  these  favourable  terms,  we  arrive  at  the  conclusion  that 
the  nation  ought  not  to  indulge  in  them  except  under  severe 
limitations.  Much  less  ought  it  to  indulge  in  them  if  the 
temptation  consequent  on  their  possession,  or  fatality  incident 
to  their  manufacture,  more  than  counterbalances  the  good 
done  by  the  effort  to  obtain  them. 


Note  6th,  p.  179. — £< Economy  of  Literature” 

I have  been  much  impressed  lately  by  one  of  the  results  of 
the  quantity  of  our  books  ; namely,  the  stern  impossibility  of 
getting  anything  understood,  that  required  patience  to  under- 
stand, I observe  always,  in  the  case  of  my  own  writings, 
that  if  ever  I state  anything  which  has  cost  me  any  trouble  to 
ascertain,  and  which,  therefore,  will  probably  require  a min- 
ute or  two  of  reflection  from  the  reader  before  it  can  be  ac- 
cepted,— that  statement  will  not  only  be  misunderstood,  but 
in  all  probability  taken  to  mean  something  very  nearly  the 
reverse  of  what  it  does  mean.  Now,  whatever  faults  there 
may  be  in  my  modes  of  expression,  I know  that  the  words  I 
use  will  always  be  found,  by  Johnson’s  dictionary,  to  bear, 
first  of  all,  the  sense  I use  them  in  ; and  that  the  sentences, 
whether  awkwardly  turned  or  not,  will,  by  the  ordinary  rules 
of  grammar,  bear  no  other  interpretation  than  that  I mean 
them  to  bear  ; so  that  the  misunderstanding  of  them  must 
result,  ultimately,  from  the  mere  fact  that  their  matter  some- 
times requires  a little  patience.  And  I see  the  same  kind  of 
misinterpretation  put  on  the  words  of  other  writers,  when- 
ever they  require  the  same  kind  of  thought. 

I was  at  first  a little  despondent  about  this ; but,  on  the 
whole,  I believe  it  will  have  a good  effect  upon  our  literature 
for  some  time  to  come  ; and  then,  perhaps,  the  public  may 
recover  its  patience  again.  For  certainly  it  is  excellent  dis- 
cipline for  an  author  to  feel  that  he  must  say  all  he  has  to  say 


ADDENDA. 


239 


in  the  fewest  possible  words,  or  his  reader  is  sure  to  skip  them  *, 
and  in  the  plainest  possible  words,  or  his  reader  will  certainly 
misunderstand  them.  Generally,  also,  a downright  fact  may 
be  told  in  a plain  way  ; and  we  want  downright  facts  at  present 
more  than  anything  else.  And  though  I often  hear  moral  peo- 
ple complaining  of  the  bad  effects  of  want  of  thought,  for  my 
part,*  it  seems  to  me  that  one  of  the  worst  diseases  to  which  the 
human  creature  is  liable  is  its  disease  of  thinking.  If  it  would 
only  just  look  * at  a thing  instead  of  thinking  what  it  must  be 
like,  or  do  a thing,  instead  of  thinking  it  cannot  be  done,  we 
should  all  get  on  far  better. 


Note  7th,  p.  216. — “ Pilots  of  the  State.” 

While,  however,  undoubtedly,  these  responsibilities  attach 
to  every  person  possessed  of  wealth,  it  is  necessary  both  to 
avoid  any  stringency  of  statement  respecting  the  benevolent 
inodes  of  spending  money,  and  to  admit  and  approve  so  much 
liberty  of  spending  it  for  selfish  pleasures  as  may  distinctly 
make  wealth  a personal  reward  for  toil,  and  secure  in  the 
minds  of  all  men  the  right  of  property.  For  although,  with- 
out doubt,  the  purest  pleasures  it  can  procure  are  not  selfish, 
it  is  only  as  a means  of  personal  gratification  that  it  will  be 

* There  can  be  no  question,  however,  of  the  mischievous  tendency  of 
the  hurry  of  the  present  day,  in  the  way  people  undertake  this  very 
looking.  I gave  three  years’  close  and  incessant  labor  to  the  examina- 
tion of  the  chronology  of  the  architecture  of  Venice  ; two  long  winters 
being  wholly  spent  in  the  drawing  of  details  on  the  spot : and  yet  I see 
constantly  that  architects  who  pass  three  or  four  days  in  a gondola  going 
up  and  down  the  grand  canal,  think  that  their  first  impressions  are  just 
as  likely  to  be  true  as  my  patiently  wrought  conclusions.  Mr.  Street, 
for  instance,  glances  hastily  at  the  fagade  of  the  Ducal  Palace — so  has- 
tily that  he  does  not  even  see  what  its  pattern  is,  and  misses  the  alterna- 
tion of  red  and  black  in  the  centres  of  its  squares — and  yet  he  instantly 
ventures  on  an  opinion  on  the  chronology  of  its  capitals,  which  is  one  of 
the  most  complicated  and  difficult  subjects  in  the  whole  range  of  Gothic 
archaeology.  It  may,  nevertheless,  be  ascertained  with  very  fair  proba- 
bility of  correctness  by  any  person  who  will  give  a month's  hard  work 
ic  it,  but  it  can  be  ascertained  no  otherwise. 


240 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


desired  by  a large  majority  of  workers  ; and  it  would  be  no 
less  false  ethics  than  false  policy  to  check  their  energy  by  any 
forms  of  public  opinion  which  bore  hardly  against  the  wanton 
expenditure  of  honestly  got  wealth.  It  would  be  hard  if  a man 
who  had  passed  the  greater  part  of  his  life  at  the  desk  or  count- 
er could  not  at  last  innocently  gratify  a caprice  ; and  all  the 
best  and  most  sacred  ends  of  almsgiving  would  be  at  once 
disappointed,  if  the  idea  of  a moral  claim  took  the  place  of 
affectionate  gratitude  in  the  mind  of  the  receiver. 

Some  distinction  is  made  by  us  naturally  in  this  respect 
between  earned  and  inherited  wealth  ; that  which  is  inherited 
appearing  to  involve  the  most  definite  responsibilities,  espe- 
cially when  consisting  in  revenues  derived  from  the  soil.  The 
form  of  taxation  which  constitutes  rental  of  lands  places  an- 
nually a certain  portion  of  the  national  wealth  in  the  hands  of 
the  nobles,  or  other  proprietors  of  the  soil,  under  conditions 
peculiarly  calculated  to  induce  them  to  give  their  best  care  to 
its  efficient  administration.  The  want  of  instruction  in  even 
the  simplest  principles  of  commerce  and  economy,  which 
hitherto  has  disgraced  our  schools  and  universities,  has  indeed 
been  the  cause  of  ruin  or  total  inutility  of  life  to  multitudes 
of  our  men  of  estate  ; but  this  deficiency  in  our  public  educa- 
tion cannot  exist  much  longer,  and  it  appears  to  be  highly 
advantageous  for  the  State  that  a certain  number  of  persons 
distinguished  by  race  should  be  permitted  to  set  examples  of 
xvise  expenditure,  whether  in  the  advancement  of  science,  or 
in  patronage  of  art  and  literature  ; only  they  must  see  to  it  that 
they  take  their  right  standing  more  firmly  than  they  have  done 
hitherto  for  the  position  of  a rich  man  in  relation  to  those 
around  him  is,  in  our  present  real  life,  and  is  also  contemplat- 
ed generally  by  political  economists  as  being,  23recisely  the 
reverse  of  what  it  ought  to  be.  A rich  man  ought  to  be  con- 
tinually examining  how  he  may  spend  his  money  for  the  ad- 
vantage of  others  ; at  present  others  are  continually  plotting 
how  they  may  beguile  him  into  spending  it  apparently  for  his 
own.  The  aspect  which  he  presents  to  the  eyes  of  the  world 
is  generally  that  of  a person  holding  a bag  of  money  with  a 
staunch  grasp,  and  resolved  to  part  with  none  of  it  unless  he 


ADDENDA. 


241 


is  forced,  and  all  the  people  about  him  are  plotting  how  they 
may  force  him  ; that  is  to  say,  how  they  may  persuade  him 
that  he  wants  this  thing  or  that  ; or  how  they  mqy  produce 
things  that  he  will  covet  and  buy.  One  man  tries  to  persuade 
him  that  he  wants  perfumes ; another  that  he  wants  jewellery  ; 
another  that  he  wants  sugarplums  ; another  that  he  wants  roses 
at  Christmas.  Anybody  who  can  invent  a new  want  for  him  is 
supposed  to  be  a benefactor  to  society  ; and  thus  the  energies 
of  the  poorer  people  about  him  are  continually  directed  to  the 
production  of  covetable,  instead  of  serviceable  things  ; and 
the  rich  man  has  the  general  aspect  of  a fool,  plotted  against 
by  all  the  world.  Whereas  the  real  aspect  which  he  ought  to 
have  is  that  of  a person  wiser  than  others,  entrusted  with  the 
management  of  a larger  quantity  of  capital,  which  he  admin- 
isters for  the  profit  of  all,  directing  each  man  to  the  labour 
which  is  most  healthy  for  him,  and  most  serviceable  for  the 
community. 


Note  8th,  p.  216. — “ Silk  and  Purple  ” 

In  various  places  throughout  these  lectures  I have  had  to 
allude  to  the  distinction  between  productive  and  unproduc- 
tive labour,  and  between  true  and  false  wealth.  I shall  here 
endeavour,  as  clearly  as  I can,  to  explain  the  distinction  I 
mean. 

Property  may  be  divided  generally  into  two  kinds ; that 
which  produces  life,  and  that  which  produces  the  objects  of 
life.  That  which  produces  or  maintains  life  consists  of  food, 
in  so  far  as  it  is  nourishing  ; of  furniture  and  clothing,  in  so 
far  as  they  are  protective  or  cherishing  ; of  fuel ; and  of  all 
land,  instruments,  or  materials,  necessary  to  produce  food, 
houses,  clothes,  and  fuel.  It  is  specially  and  rightly  called 
useful  property. 

The  property  which  produces  the  objects  of  life  consists  of 
all  that  gives  pleasure  or  suggests  and  preserves  thought : of 
food,  furniture,  and  land,  in  so  far  as  they  are  pleasing  to  the 
appetite  or  the  eye  ; of  luxurious  dress,  and  all  other  kinds 
of  luxuries ; of  books,  pictures,  and  architecture.  But  the 


242 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


modes  of  connection  of  certain  minor  forms  of  property  with 
human  labour  render  it  desirable  to  arrange  them  under  more 
than  these  two  heads.  Property  may  therefore  be  conve- 
niently considered  as  of  five  kinds. 

1st.  Property  necessary  to  life,  but  not  producible  by  la- 
bour, and  therefore  belonging  of  right,  in  a due  measure,  to 
every  human  being  as  soon  as  he  is  born,  and  morally  in- 
alienable. As  for  instance,  his  proper  share  of  the  atmos- 
phere, without  which  he  cannot  breathe,  and  of  water,  which 
he  needs  to  quench  his  thirst.  As  much  land  as  he  needs  to 
feed  from  is  also  inalienable  ; but  in  well  regulated  com- 
munities this  quantity  of  land  .may  often  be  represented  by 
other  possessions,  or  its  need  supplied  by  wages  and  privi- 
leges. 

2.  Property  necessary  to  life,  but  only  producible  by  la- 
bour, and  of  which  the  possession  is  morally  connected  with 
labour,  so  that  no  person  capable  of  doing  the  work  necessary 
for  its  production  has  a right  to  it  until  he  has  done  that 
work; — “he  that  will  not  work,  neither  should  he  eat.”  It 
consists  of  simple  food,  clothing,  and  habitation,  with  their 
seeds  and  materials,  or  instruments  and  machinery,  and  ani- 
mals used  for  necessary  draught  or  locomotion,  &c.  It  is  to 
be  observed  of  this  kind  of  property,  that  its  increase  cannot 
usually  be  carried  beyond  a certain  point,  because  it  depends 
not  on  labour  only,  but  on  things  of  which  the  supply  is  lim- 
ited by  nature.  The  possible  accumulation  of  corn  depends 
on  the  quantity  of  corn-growing  land  possessed  or  commer- 
cially accessible  ; and  that  of  steel,  similarly,  on  the  accessible 
quantity  of  coal  and  ironstone.  It  follows  from  this  natural 
limitation  of  supply  that  the  accumulation  of  property  of  this 
kind  in  large  masses  at  one  point,  or  in  one  person’s  hands, 
commonly  involves,  more  or  less,  the  scarcity  of  it  at  another 
point  and  in  other  persons’  hands  ; so  that  the  accidents 
or  energies  which  may  enable  one  man  to  procure  a great 
deal  of  it,  may,  and  in  all  likelihood  will  partially  prevent 
other  men  procuring  a sufficiency  of  it,  however  willing  they 
may  be  to  work  for  it  ; therefore,  the  modes  of  its  accumula- 
tion and  distribution  need  to  be  in  some  degree  regulated  by 


ADDENDA. 


243 

law  and  by  national  treaties,  in  order  to  secure  justice  to  all 
men. 

Another  point  requiring ‘notice  respecting  this  sort  of  prop- 
erty is,  that  no  work  can  be  wasted  in  producing  it,  provided 
only  the  kind  of  it  produced  be  preservable  and  distributable, 
since  for  every  grain  of  such  commodities  we  produce  we  are 
rendering  so  much  more  life  possible  on  earth.*  But  though 
we  are  sure,  thus,  that  we  are  employing  people  well,  we  can- 
not be  sure  we  might  not  have  employed  them  better  ; for  it 
is  possible  to  direct  labour  to  the  production  of  life,  until  lit- 
tle or  none  is  left  for  that  of  the  objects  of  life,  and  thus  to 
increase  population  at  the  expense  of  civilization,  learning, 
and  morality  : on  the  other  hand,  it  is  just  as  possible — and 
the  error  is  one  to  which  the  world  is,  on  the  whole,  more 
liable — to  direct  labour  to  the  objects  of  life  till  too  little  is 
left  for  life,  and  thus  to  increase  luxury  or  learning  at  the  ex- 
pense of  population.  Bight  political  economy  holds  its  aim 
poised  justly  between  the  two  extremes,  desiring  neither  to 

* This  point  has  sometimes  "been  disputed  ; for  instance,  opening 
Mill’s  Political  Economy  the  other  day,  I chanced  on  a passage  in  which 
he  says  that  a man  who  makes  a coat,  if  the  person  who  wears  the  coat 
does  nothing  useful  while  he  wears  it,  has  done  no  more  good  to  society 
than  the  man  who  has  only  raised  a pine- apple.  But  this  is  a fallacy 
induced  by  endeavour  after  too  much  subtlety.  None  of  us  have  a right 
to  say  that  the  life  of  a man  is  of  no  use  to  him,  though  it  may  be  of  no 
use  to  us  ; and  the  man  who  made  the  coat,  and  thereby  prolonged  an- 
other man’s  life,  has  done  a gracious  and  useful  work,  whatever  may 
come  of  the  life  so  prolonged.  We  may  say  to  the  wearer  of  the  coat, 
“You  who  are  wearing  coats,  and  doing  nothing  in  them,  are  at  present 
wasting  your  own  life  and  other  people’s  ; ” but  we  have  no  right  to  say 
that  his  existence,  however  wasted,  is  wasted  away.  It  may  be  just 
dragging  itself  on,  in  its  thin  golden  line,  with  nothing  dependent  upon 
it,  to  the  point  where  it  is  to  strengthen  into  good  chain  cable,  and  have 
thousands  of  other  lives  dependent  on  it.  Meantime,  the  simple  fact 
respecting  the  coat-maker  is,  that  he  has  given  so  much  life  to  the  creat- 
ure, the  results  of  which  he  cannot  calculate  ; they  may  be — in  all 
probability  will  be — infinite  results  in  some  way.  But  the  raiser  of 
pines,  who  has  only  given  a pleasant  taste  in  the  mouth  to  some  one, 
may  see  with  tolerable  clearness  to  the  end  of  the  taste  in  the  mouth, 
and  of  all  conceivable  results  therefrom. 


244 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


crowd  its  dominions  with  a race  of  savages,  nor  to  found 
courts  and  colleges  in  the  midst  of  a desert. 

3.  The  third  kind  of  property  is  that  which  conduces  to 
bodily  pleasures  and  conveniences,  without  directly  tending 
to  sustain  life  ; perhaps  sometimes  indirectly  tending  to  de- 
stroy it.  All  dainty  (as  distinguished  from  nourishing)  food, 
and  means  of  producing  it  ; all  scents  not  needed  for  health ; 
substances  valued  only  for  their  appearance  and  rarity  (as  gold 
and  jewels) ; flowers  of  difficult  culture  ; animals  used  for  de- 
light (as  horses  for  racing),  and  such  like,  form  property  of 
this  class  ; to  which  the  term  ‘‘luxury,  or  luxuries,”  ought  ex- 
clusively to  belong. 

Respecting  which  wre  have  to  note,  first,  that  all  such  prop- 
erty is  of  doubtful  advantage  even  to  its  possessor.  Furni- 
ture tempting  to  indolence,  sweet  odours,  and  luscious  food, 
are  more  or  less  injurious  to  health  : while  jewTels,  liveries, 
and  other  such  common  belongings  of  wealthy  j3eople,  cer- 
tainly convey  no  pleasure  to  their  owners  proportionate  to 
their  cost. 

Farther,  such  property,  for  the  most  part,  perishes  in  the 
using.  Jewels  form  a great  exception — but  rich  food,  fine 
dresses,  horses  and  carriages,  are  consumed  by  the  owner’s 
use.  It  ought  much  oftener  to  be  brought  to  the  notice  of 
rich  men  what  sums  of  interest  of  money  they  are  paying  tow- 
ards the  close  of  their  lives,  for  luxuries  consumed  in  the 
middle  of  them.  It  wrould  be  very  interesting,  for  instance, 
to  know  the  exact  sum  which  the  money  spent  in  London  for 
ices,  at  its  desserts  and  balls,  during  the  last  twenty  years  had 
it  been  saved  and  put  out  at  compound  interest,  would  at  this 
moment  have  furnished  for  useful  purposes. 

Also,  in  most  cases,  the  enjoyment  of  such  property  is 
wholly  selfish,  and  limited  to  its  possessor.  Splendid  dress 
and  equipage,  however,  when  so  arranged  as  to  produce  real 
beauty  of  effect,  may  often  be  rather  a generous  than  a selfish 
channel  of  expenditure.  The}'  will,  however,  necessarily  in 
such  case  involve  some  of  the  arts  of  design  ; and  therefore 
take  their  place  in  a higher  category  than  that  of  luxuries 
merely. 


ADDENDA . 


245 


4.  The  fourth  kind  of  property  is  that  which  bestows  inteb 
lectual  or  emotional  pleasure,  consisting  of  land  set  apart  for 
purposes  of  delight  more  than  for  agriculture,  of  books,  works 
of  art,  and  objects  of  natural  history. 

It  is,  of  course,  impossible  to  fix  an  accurate  limit  between 
property  of  the  last  class  and  of  this  class,  since  things  which 
are  a mere  luxury  to  one  person  are  a means  of  intellectual 
occupation  to  another.  Flowers  in  a London  ball-room  are  a 
luxury  ; in  a botanical  garden,  a delight  of  the  intellect ; and 
in  their  native  fields,  both  ; while  the  most  noble  works  of  art 
are  continually  made  material  of  vulgar  luxury  or  of  criminal 
pride  ; but,  when  rightly  used,  property  of  this  fourth  class 
is  the  only  kind  which  deserves  the  name  of  real  property  ; it 
is  the  only  kind  which  a man  can  truly  be  said  to  “ possess.” 
What  a man  eats,  or  drinks,  or  wears,  so  long  as  it  is  only 
what  is  needful  for  life,  can  no  more  be  thought  of  as  his  pos- 
session than  the  air  he  breathes.  The  air  is  as  needful  to  him 
as  the  food  ; but  we  do  not  talk  of  a man’s  wealth  of  air,  and 
what  food  or  clothing  a man  possesses  more  than  he  himself 
requires,  must  be  for  others  to  use  (and,  to  him,  therefore, 
not  a real  property  in  itself,  but  only  a means  of  obtaining 
some  real  property  in  exchange  for  it).  Whereas  the  things 
that  give  intellectual  or  emotional  enjoyment  may  be  accu- 
mulated and  do  not  perish  in  using ; but  continually  supply  new 
pleasures  and  new  powders  of  giving  pleasure  to  others.  And 
these,  therefore,  are  the  only  things  wdiich  can  rightly  be 
thought  of  as  giving  “wrealth”or  “well  being.”  Food  con- 
duces only  to  “being,” but  these  to  “ well  being.”  And  there 
is  not  any  broader  general  distinction  between  low^er  and 
higher  orders  of  men  than  rests  on  their  possession  of  this 
real  property.  The  human  race  may  be  properly  divided  by 
zoologists  into  “men  who  have  gardens,  libraries/,  or  works  of 
art ; and  who  have  none  ; ” and  the  former  class  will  include 
all  noble  persons,  except  only  a few  who  make  the  world  their 
garden  or  museum  ; wrhile  the  people  who  have  not,  or,  which 
is  the  same  thing,  do  not  care  for  gardens  or  libraries,  but 
care  for  nothing  but  money  or  luxuries,  will  include  none  but 
ignoble  persons  : only  it  is  necessary  to  understand  that  I 


24G 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


mean  by  the  term  “ garden  ” as  much  the  Carthusian’s  plot  ol 
ground  fifteen  feet  square  between  his  monastery  buttresses, 
as  I do  the  grounds  of  Chatsworth  or  Kew  ; and  I mean  by 
the  term  “ art  ” as  much  the  old  sailor’s  print  of  the  Arethusa 
bearing  up  to  engage  the  Belle  Poule,  as  I do  Raphael’s  “Dis- 
puta,”  and  even  rather  more ; for  when  abundant,  beautiful 
possessions  of  this  kind  are  almost  always  associated  wfith  vul- 
gar luxury,  and  become  then  anything  but  indicative  of  noble 
character  in  their  possessors.  The  ideal  of  human  life  is  a 
union  of  Spartan  simplicity  of  manners  with  Athenian  sensi- 
bility and  imagination,  but  in  actual  results,  we  are  continu- 
ally mistaking  ignorance  for  simplicity,  and  sensuality  for 
refinement. 

5.  The  fifth  kind  of  property  is  representative  property, 
consisting  of  documents  or  money,  or  rather  documents  only, 
for  money  itself  is  only  a transferable  document,  current 
among  societies  of  men,  giving  claim,  at  sight,  to  some  defi- 
nite benefit  or  advantage,  most  commonly  to  a certain  share  of 
real  property  existing  in  those  societies.  The  money  is  only 
genuine  when  the  property  it  gives  claim  to  is  real,  or  the  ad- 
vantages it  gives  claim  to  certain  ; otherwise,  it  is  false  money, 
and  may  be  considered  as  much  “ forged  ” when  issued  by  a 
government,  or  a bank,  as  when  by  an  individual.  Thus,  ii 
a dozen  of  men,  cast  ashore  on  a desert  island,  pick  up  a num- 
ber of  stones,  put  a red  spot  on  each  stone,  and  pass  a law 
that  every  stone  marked  with  a red  spot  shall  give  claim  to  a 
peck  of  wheat ; — so  long  as  no  wheat  exists,  or  can  exist,  on 
the  island,  the  stones  are  not  money.  But  the  moment  so 
much  wheat  exists  as  shall  render  it  possible  for  the  society 
always  to  give  a peck  for  every  spotted  stone,  the  spotted 
stones  ’would  become  money,  and  might  be  exchanged  by 
their  possessors  for  whatever  other  commodities  they  chose, 
to  the  value  of  the  peck  of  wheat  which  the  stones  repre- 
sented. If  more  stones  were  issued  than  the  quantity  of 
wheat  could  answer  the  demand  of,  the  value  of  the  stone 
coinage  would  be  depreciated,  in  proportion  to  its  increase 
above  the  quantity  needed  to  answer  it. 

Again,  supposing  a certain  number  of  the  men  so  cast 


ADDENDA. 


247 


ashore  were  set  aside  by  lot,  or  any  other  convention,  to  do 
the  rougher  labour  necessary  for  the  whole  society,  they 
themselves  being  maintained  by  the  daily  allotment  of  a cer- 
tain quantity  of  food,  clothing,  &c.  Then,  if  it  were  agreed 
that  the  stones  spotted  with  red  should  be  signs  of  a Govern- 
ment order  for  the  labour  of  these  men  ; and  that  any  person 
presenting  a spotted  stone  at  the  office  of  the  labourers, 
should  be  entitled  to  a man’s  work  for  a week  or  a day,  the 
red  stones  would  be  money  ; and  might — probably  would,— 
immediately  pass  current  in  the  island  for  as  much  food,  oi 
clothing,  or  iron,  or  any  other  article  as  a man’s  work  for  the 
period  secured  by  the  stone  was  worth.  But  if  the  Govern- 
ment issued  so  many  spotted  stones  that  it  was  impossible  for 
the  body  of  men  they  employed  to  comply  with  the  orders  ; 
as,  suppose,  if  they  only  employed  twelve  men,  and  issued 
eighteen  spotted  stones  daily,  ordering  a day’s  work  each, 
then  the  six  extra  stones  would  be  forged  or  false  money  ; 
and  the  effect  of  this  forgery  would  be  the  depreciation  of  the 
value  of  the  whole  coinage  by  one-third,  that  being  the  period 
of  shortcoming  which  would,  on  the  average,  necessarily  ensue 
in  the  execution  of  each  order.  Much  occasional  work  may 
be  done  in  a state  or  society,  by  help  of  an  issue  of  false 
money  (or  false  promises)  by  way  of  stimulants  ; and  the  fruit 
of  this  work,  if  it  comes  into  the  promiser’s  hands,  may  some- 
times enable  the  false  promises  at  last  to  be  fulfilled  : hence 
the  frequent  issue  of  false  money  by  governments  and  banks, 
and  the  not  unfrequent  escapes  from  the  natural  and  proper 
consequences  of  such  false  issues,  so  as  to  cause  a confused 
conception  in  most  people’s  minds  of  what  money  really  is.  1 
am  not  sure  whether  some  quantity  of  such  false  issue  may 
not  really  be  permissible  in  a nation,  accurately  proportioned 
to  the  minimum  average  produce  of  the  labour  it  excites  ; 
but  all  such  procedures  are  more  or  less  unsound  ; and  the 
notion  of  unlimited  issue  of  currency  is  simply  one  of  the 
absurdest  and  most  monstrous  that  ever  came  into  disjointed 
human  wits. 

The  use  of  objects  of  real  or  supposed  value  for  currenc}r, 
as  gold,  jewellery,  &c.3  is  barbarous ; and  it  always  expresses 


248 


A JOT  FOR  EVER. 


either  the  measure  of  the  distrust  in  the  society  of  its  owu 
government,  or  the  proportion  of  distrustful  or  barbarous 
nations  with  whom  it  has  to  deal.  A metal  not  easily  cor- 
roded or  imitated,  is  a desirable  medium  of  currency  for  the 
sake  of  cleanliness  and  convenience,  but  were  it  possible  to 
prevent  forgery,  the  more  worthless  the  metal  itself,  the 
better.  The  use  of  worthless  media,  unrestrained  by  the  use 
of  valuable  media,  has  always  hitherto  involved,  and  is  there* 
fore  supposed  to  involve  necessarily,  unlimited,  or  at  least 
improperly  extended,  issue  ; but  we  might  as  well  suppose 
that  a man  must  necessarily  issue  unlimited  promises  because 
his  words  cost  nothing.  Intercourse  with  foreign  nations 
must,  indeed,  for  ages  yet  to  come,  at  the  world’s  present 
rate  of  progress,  be  carried  oil  by  valuable  currencies  ; but 
such  transactions  are  nothing  more  than  forms  of  barter. 
The  gold  used  at  present  as  a currency  is  not,  in  point  of 
fact,  currency  at  all,  but  the  real  property  * which  the  cur- 
rency gives  claim  to,  stamped  to  measure  its  quantity,  and 
mingling  with  the  real  currency  occasionally  by  barter. 

The  evils  necessarily  resulting  from  the  use  of  baseless  cur- 
rencies have  been  terribly  illustrated  while  these  sheets  have 
been  passing  through  the  press ; I have  not  had  time  to  ex- 
amine the  various  conditions  of  dishonest  or  absurd  trading 
which  have  led  to  the  late  “ panic”  in  America  and  England  ; 
this  only  I know,  that  no  merchant  deserving  the  name  ought 
to  be  more  liable  to  “ panic”  than  a soldier  should;  for  his 

* Or  rather,  equivalent  to  such  real  property,  because  everybody  has 
been  accustomed  to  look  upon  it  as  valuable  ; and  therefore  everybody 
is  willing  to  give  labour  or  goods  for  it.  But  real  property  does  ulti- 
mately consist  only  in  things  that  nourish  the  body  or  mind  ; gold 
would  be  useless  to  us  if  we  could  not  get  mutton  or  books  for  it.  Ul- 
timately all  commercial  mistakes  and  embarrassments  result  from  peo- 
ple expecting  to  get  goods  without  working  for  them,  or  wasting  them 
after  they  have  got  them.  A nation  which  labours,  and  takes  care  of 
the  fruits  of  labour,  would  be  rich  and  happy  ; though  there  were  no 
gold  in  the  universe.  A nation  which  is  idle,  and  wastes  the  produce 
of  what  work  it  does,  would  be  poor  and  miserable,  though  all  its 
mountains  were  of  gold,  and  had  glens  tilled  with  diamond  instead  of 
glacier. 


ADDENDA. 


249 


name  should  never  be  on  more  paper  than  he  can  at  any  in- 
stant meet  the  call  of,  happen  what  will.  I do  not  say  this 
without  feeling  at  the  same  time  how  difficult  it  is  to  mark, 
in  existing  commerce,  the  just  limits  between  the  spirit  of 
enterprise  and  of  speculation.  Something  of  the  same  tem- 
per which  makes  the  English  soldier  do  always  all  that  is  pos- 
sible, and  attempt  more  than  is  possible,  joins  its  influence 
with  that  of  mere  avarice  in  tempting  the  English  merchant 
into  risks  which  he  cannot  justify,  and  efforts  which  he  can- 
not sustain  ; and  the  same  passion  for  adventure  which  our 
travellers  gratify  every  summer  on  perilous  snow  wreaths,  and 
cloud-encompassed  precipices,  surrounds  with  a romantic  fas- 
cination the  glittering  of  a hollow  investment,  and  gilds  the 
clouds  that  curl  round  gulfs  of  ruin.  Nay,  a higher  and  a 
more  serious  feeling  frequently  mingles  in  the  motley  temp- 
tation ; and  men  apply  themselves  to  the  task  of  growing  rich, 
as  to  a labour  of  providential  appointment,  from  which  they 
cannot  pause  without  culpability,  nor  retire  without  dis- 
honour. Our  large  trading  cities  bear  to  me  very  nearly  the 
aspect  of  monastic  establishments  in  which  the  roar  of  the 
mill-wheel  and  the  crane  takes  the  place  of  other  devotional 
music  : and  in  which  the  worship  of  Mammon  and  Moloch  is 
conducted  with  a tender  reverence  and  an  exact  propriety  : 
the  merchant  rising  to  his  Mammon  matins  with  the  self- 
denial  of  an  anchorite,  and  expiating  the  frivolities  into  which 
he  may  be  beguiled  in  the  course  of  the  day  by  late  attend- 
ance at  Mammon  vespers.  But,  with  every  allowance  that 
can  be  made  for  these  conscientious  and  romantic  persons, 
the  fact  remains  the  same,  that  by  far  the  greater  number  of 
the  transactions  which  lead  to  these  times  of  commercial  em- 
barrassment may  be  ranged  simply  under  two  great  heads,-— 
gambling  and  stealing  ; and  both  of  these  in  their  most  cul- 
pable form,  namely,  gambling  with  money  which  is  not  ours, 
and  stealing  from  those  who  trust  us.  I have  sometimes 
thought  a day  might  come,  when  the  nation  would  perceive 
that  a well-educated  man  who  steals  a hundred  thousand 
pounds,  involving  the  entire  means  of  subsistence  of  a hun- 
dred families,  deserves,  on  the  whole,  as  severe  a punishment 


250 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


as  an  ill-educated  man  who  steals  a purse  from  a pocket,  or  a 
mug  from  a pantry.  But  without  hoping  for  this  success  of 
clear-sightedness,  we  may  at  least  labour  for  a system  of 
greater  honesty  and  kindness  in  the  minor  commerce  of  our 
daily  life  ; since  the  great  dishonesty  of  the  great  buyers  and 
sellers  is  nothing  more  than  the  natural  growth  and  outcome 
from  the  little  dishonesty  of  the  little  buyers  and  sellers. 
Every  person  who  tries  to  buy  an  article  for  less  than  its 
proper  value,  or  who  tries  to  sell  it  at  more  than  its  proper 
value — every  consumer  who  keeps  a tradesman  waiting  for 
his  money,  and  every  tradesman  who  bribes  a consumer  to 
extravagance  by  credit,  is  helping  forward,  according  to  his 
own  measure  of  power,  a system  of  baseless  and  dishonour- 
able commerce,  and  forcing  his  country  down  into  poverty 
and  shame.  And  people  of  moderate  means*-  and  average 
powers  of  mind  would  do  far  more  real  good  by  merely  car- 
rying out  stem  principles  of  justice  and  honesty  in  common 
matters  of  trade,  than  by  the  most  ingenious  schemes  of  ex- 
tended philanthropy,  or  vociferous  declarations  of  theological 
doctrine.  There  are  three  weighty  matters  of  the  law — jus- 
tice, mercy  and  truth  ; and  of  these  the  Teacher  puts  truth 
last,  because  that  cannot  be  known  but  by  a course  of  acts  of 
justice  and  love.  But  men  put,  in  all  their  efforts,  truth  first, 
because  they  mean  by  it  their  own  opinions  ; and  thus,  while 
the  world  has  many  people  who  would  suffer  martyrdom  in 
the  cause  of  what  they  call  truth,  it  has  few  who  will  suffer 
even  a little  inconvenience  in  that  of  justice  and  mercy. 


EDUCATION  IN  ABT. 


Read  for  the  author  before  the  National  Association  for  the  Pro - 
motion  of  Social  Science  in  the  autumn  of  1858  ; and 
printed  in  the  Transactions  of  the  Society  for  that  year , pp. 

311  '16. 

I will  not  attempt  in  this  paper  to  enter  into  any  general 
consideration  of  the  possible  influence  of  art  on  the  masses  of 
the  people.  The  inquiry  is  one  of  great  complexity,  involved 
with  that  into  the  uses  and  dangers  of  luxury  ; nor  have  we 
as  yet  data  enough  to  justify  us  in  conjecturing  how  far  the 
practice  of  art  may  be  compatible  with  rude  or  mechanical 
employments.  But  the  question,  however  difficult,  lies  in  the 
same  light  as  that  of  the  uses  of  reading  or  writing ; for  draw- 
ing, so  far  as  it  is  possible  to  the  multitude,  is  mainly  to  be 
considered  as  a means  of  obtaining  and  communicating  knowl- 
edge. He  who  can  accurately  represent  the  form  of  an  ob- 
ject, and  match  its  colour,  has  unquestionably  a power  of 
notation  and  description  greater  in  most  instances  than  that 
of  words  ; and  this  science  of  notation  ought  to  be  simply 
regarded  as  that  which  is  concerned  with  the  record  of  form, 
just  as  arithmetic  is  concerned  with  the  record  of  number. 
Of  course  abuses  and  dangers  attend  the  acquirement  of  every 
power.  We  have  all  of  us  probably  known  persons  who, 
without  being  able  to  read  or  write,  discharged  the  important 
duties  of  life  wisely  and  faithfully1;  as  we  have  also  without 
doubt  known  others  able  to  read  and  write,  whose  reading 
did  little  good  to  themselves,  and  whose  writing  little  good  to 
any  one  else.  But  we  do  not  therefore  doubt  the  expediency 
of  acquiring  those  arts ; neither  ought  we  to  doubt  the  ex- 
pediency of  acquiring  the  art  of  drawing,  if  we  admit  that  it 
may  indeed  become  practically  useful. 

Nor  should  we  long  hesitate  in  admitting  this,  if  we  were 


252 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


not  in  the  habit  of  considering  instruction  in  the  arts  chiefly 
as  a means  of  promoting  what  we  call  “ taste  ” or  dilettantism, 
and  other  habits  of  mind,  which,  in  their  more  modern  develop- 
ments in  Europe,  have  certainly  not  been  advantageous  to 
nations,  or  indicative  of  worthiness  in  them.  Nevertheless, 
true  taste,  or  the  instantaneous  preference  of  the  noble  thing 
to  the  ignoble,  is  a necessary  accompaniment  of  high  worthi- 
ness in  nations  or  men  ; only  it  is  not  to  be  acquired  by  seek- 
ing it  as  our  chief  object,  since  the  first  question,  alike  for 
man  and  for  multitude,  is  not  at  all  what  they  are  to  like,  but 
what  they  are  to  do  ; and  fortunately  so,  since  true  taste,  so 
far  as  it  depends  on  original  instinct,  is  not  equally  com- 
municable to  all  men  ; and,  so  far  as  it  depends  on  extended 
comparison,  is  unattainable  by  men  employed  in  narrow  fields 
of  life.  We  shall  not  succeed  in  making  a peasant’s  opinion 
good  evidence  on  the  merits  of  the  Elgin  and  Lycian  marbles  ; 
nor  is  it  necessary  to  dictate  to  him  in  his  garden  the  prefer- 
ence of  gillyflower  or  of  rose  ; yet  I believe  we  may  make  art 
a means  of  giving  him  helpful  and  happy  pleasure,  and  oi 
gaining  for  him  serviceable  knowledge. 

Thus,  in  our  simplest  codes  of  school  instruction,  I hope 
some  day  to  see  local  natural  history  assume  a principal  place, 
so  that  our  peasant  children  may  be  taught  the  nature  and 
uses  of  the  herbs  that  grow  in  their  meadows,  and  may  take 
interest  in  observing  and  cherishing,  rather  than  in  hunting 
or  killing,  the  harmless  animals  of  tlieir  country.  Supposing 
it  determined  that  this  local  natural  history  should  be  taught, 
drawing  ought  to  be  used  to  fix  the  attention,  and  test,  while 
it  aided,  the  memory.  “ Draw  such  and  such  a flower  in  out- 
line, with  its  bell  towards  you.  Draw  it  with  its  side  towards 
you.  Paint  the  spots  upon  it.  Draw  a duck’s  head — her 
foot.  Now  a robin’s, — a thrush’s, — now  the  spots  upon  the 
thrush’s  breast.”  These  are  the  kind  of  tasks  which  it  seems 
to  me  should  be  set  to  the  young  peasant  student.  Surely 
the  occupation  would  no  more  be  thought  contemptible  which 
was  thus  subservient  to  knowledge  and  to  compassion  ; and 
perhaps  we  should  find  in  process  of  time  that  the  Italian 
connexion  of  art  with  dileMo,  or  delight,  was  both  consistent 


EDUCATION  IN  ART. 


253 


With,  and  even  mainly  consequent  upon,  a pure  Greek  con- 
nexion of  art  with  arete , or  virtue. 

It  may  perhaps  he  thought  that  the  power  of  representing 
in  any  sufficient  manner  natural  objects  such  a?.'  those  above 
instanced  would  be  of  too  difficult  attainment  in  be  aimed  at 
in  elementary  instruction.  But  I have  had  practical  proof 
that  it  is  not  so.  From  workmen  who  had  little  time  to  spare, 
and  that  only  after  they  were  jaded  by  the  day’s  labour,  I have 
obtained,  in  the  course  of  three  or  four  mont  (is  from  their 
first  taking  a pencil  in  hand,  perfectly  useful,  and  in  many 
respects  admirable,  drawings  of  natural  objects.  It  is,  how- 
ever, necessary,  in  order  to  secure  this  result,  that  the  stu- 
dent’s aim  should  be  absolutely  restricted  to  the  representation 
of  visible  fact.  All  more  varied  or  elevated  practice  must  be 
deferred  until  the  powers  of  true  sight  and  just  representation 
are  acquired  in  simplicity  ; nor,  in  the  case  of  children  be- 
longing to  the  lower  classes,  does  it  seem  to  me  often  advis- 
able to  aim  at  anything  more.  At  all  events,  their  drawing 
lessons  should  be  made  as  recreative  as  possible.  Undergoing 
due  discipline  of  hard  labour  in  other  directions,  such  children 
should  be  painlessly  initiated  into  employments  calculated  for 
the  relief  of  toil.  It  is  of  little  consequence  that  they  should 
know  the  principles  of  art,  but  of  much  that  their  attention 
should  be  pleasurably  excited.  In  our  higher  public  schools, 
on  the  contrary,  drawing  should  be  taught  rightly  ; that  is  to 
say,  with  due  succession  and  security  of  preliminary  steps,— 
it  being  here  of  little  consequence  whether  the  student  attains 
great  or  little  skill,  but  of  much  that  he  should  perceive  dis- 
tinctly what  degree  of  skill  he  has  attained,  reverence  that 
which  surpasses  it,  and  know  the  principles  of  right  in  what 
he  has  been  able  to  accomplish.  It  is  impossible  to  make 
every  boy  an  artist  or  a connoisseur,  but  quite  possible  to 
make  him  understand  the  meaning  of  art  in  its  rudiments,  and 
to  make  him  modest  enough  to  forbear  expressing,  in  after  life, 
judgments  which  he  has  not  knowledge  enough  to  render  just. 

There  is,  howrever,  at  present  this  great  difficulty  in  the  wray 
of  such  systematic  teaching — that  the  public  do  not  believe 
the  principles  of  art  are  determinable,  and  in  no  wise  matters 


254 


A JOY  FOR  EVER . 


of  opinion.  They  do  not  believe  that  good  drawing  is  good, 
and  bad  drawing  is  bad,  whatever  any  number  of  persons  may 
think  or  declare  to  the  contrary — that  there  is  a right  or  best 
way  of  laying  colours  to  produce  a given  effect,  just  as  there 
is  a right  or  best  way  of  dyeing  cloth  of  a given  colour,  and 
that  Titian  and  Veronese  are  not  merely  accidentally  admirable 
but  eternally  right. 

The  public,  of  course,  cannot  be  convinced  of  this  unity 
and  stability  of  principle  until  clear  assertion  of  it  is  made  to 
them  by  painters  whom  they  respect  ; and  the  painters  whom 
they  respect  are  generally  too  modest,  and  sometimes  too 
proud,  to  make  it.  I believe  the  chief  reason  for  their  not 
having  yet  declared  at  least  the  fundamental  laws  of  labour  a3 
connected  with  art-study  is  a kind  of  feeling  on  their  part 
that  “ cela  va  sans  dire .”  Every  great  painter  knows  so  well 
the  necessity  of  hard  and  systematized  work,  in  order  to  at- 
tain even  the  lower  degrees  of  skill,  that  he  naturally  supposes 
if  people  use  no  diligence  in  drawing,  they  do  not  care  to  ac- 
quire the  power  of  it,  and  that  the  toil  involved  in  wholesome 
study  being  greater  than  the  mass  of  people  have  ever  given, 
is  also  greater  than  they  would  ever  be  willing  to  give.  Feel- 
ing, also,  as  any  real  painter  feels,  that  his  own  excellence  is 
a gift,  no  less  than  the  reward  of  toil,  perhaps  slightly  dislik- 
ing to  confess  the  labour  it  has  cost  him  to  perfect  it,  and 
wholly  despairing  of  doing  any  good  by  the  confession,  he 
contemptuously  leaves  the  drawing-master  to  do  the  best  he 
can  in  his  twelve  lessons,  and  with  courteous  unkindness 
permits  the  young  women  of  England  to  remain  under  the 
impression  that  they  can  learn  to  draw  wdth  less  pains  than 
they  can  learn  to  dance.  I have  had  practical  experience 
enough,  however,  to  convince  me  that  this  treatment  of  the 
amateur  student  is  unjust.  Young  girls  will  work  with 
steadiest  perseverance  when  once  they  understand  the  need  of 
labour,  and  are  convinced  that  drawing  is  a kind  of  language 
which  may  for  ordinary  purposes  be  learned  as  easily  as 
French  and  German  ; this  language,  also,  having  its  grammar 
and  its  pronunciation,  to  be  conquered  or  acquired  only  by 
persistence  in  irksome  exercise — an  error  in  a form  being  as 


EDUCATION  IN  ART, 


255 


entirely  and  simply  an  error  as  a mistake  in  a tense,  and  an 
ill-drawn  line  as  reprehensible  as  a vulgar  accent. 

And  I attach  great  importance  to  the  sound  education  of 
our  younger  females  in  art,  thinking  that  in  England  the 
nursery  and  the  drawing-room  are  perhaps  the  most  influen- 
tial of  academies.  We  address  ourselves  in  vain  to  the  edu- 
cation of  the  artist  while  the  demand  for  his  work  is  uncer- 
tain or  unintelligent ; nor  can  art  be  considered  as  having  any 
serious  influence  on  a nation  while  gilded  papers  form  the 
principal  splendour  of  the  reception  room,  and  ill-wrought 
though  costly  trinkets  the  principal  entertainment  of  the 
boudoir. 

It  is  surely,  therefore,  to  be  regretted,  that  the  art-educa- 
tion of  our  Government  schools  is  addressed  so  definitely  to 
the  guidance  of  the  artisan,  and  is  therefore  so  little  acknowl- 
edged hitherto  by  the  general  public,  especially  by  its  upper 
classes.  I have  not  acquaintance  enough  with  the  practical 
working  of  that  system  to  venture  any  expression  of  opinion 
respecting  its  general  expediency;  but  it  is  my  conviction 
that,  so  far  as  references  are  involved  in  it  to  the  designing 
of  patterns  capable  of  being  produced  by  machinery,  such  ref- 
erences must  materially  diminish  its  utility  considered  as  a 
general  system  of  instruction. 

We  are  still,  therefore,  driven  to  the  same  point, — the  need 
of  an  authoritative  recommendation  of  some  method  of  study 
to  the  public  ; a method  determined  upon  by  the  concurrence 
of  some  of  our  best  painters,  and  avowedly  sanctioned  by 
them,  so  as  to  leave  no  room  for  hesitation  in  its  acceptance. 

Nor  need  it  be  thought  that,  because  the  ultimate  methods 
of  work  employed  by  painters  vary  according  to  the  particu- 
lar effects  produced  by  each,  there  would  be  any  difficulty  in 
obtaining  their  collective  assent  to  a system  of  elementary 
precept.  The  facts  of  which  it  is  necessary  that  the  student 
should  be  assured  in  his  early  efforts,  are  so  simple,  so  few, 
and  so  well  known  to  all  able  draughtsmen  that,  as  I have 
just  said,  it  would  be  rather  doubt  of  the  need  of  stating  what 
seemed  to  them  self-evident,  than  reluctance  to  speak  authori- 
tatively on  points  capable  of  dispute,  that  would  stand  in  the 


256 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


way  of  their  giving  form  to  a code  of  general  instruction.  To 
take  merely  two  instances  : It  will  perhaps  appear  hardly 
credible  that  among  amateur  students,  however  far  advanced 
in  more  showy  accomplishments,  there  will  not  be  found  one 
in  a hundred  who  can  make  an  accurate  drawing*  to  scale.  It 
is  much,  if  they  can  copy  anything  with  approximate  fidelity 
of  its  real  size.  Now,  the  inaccuracy  of  eye  which  prevents  a 
student  from  drawing  to  scale  is  in  fact  nothing  else  than  an 
entire  want  of  appreciation  of  proportion,  and  therefore  of 
composition.  He  who  alters  the  relations  of  dimensions  to 
each  other  in  his  copy,  shows  that  he  does  not  enjoy  those  re- 
lations in  the  original — that  is  to  say,  that  all  appreciation  of 
noble  design  (which  is  based  on  the  most  exquisite  relations 
of  magnitude)  is  impossible  to  him.  To  give  him  habits  of 
mathematical  accuracy  in  transference  of  the  outline  of  com- 
plex form,  is  therefore,  among  the  first,  and  even  among  the 
most  important,  means  of  educating  his  taste.  A student  who 
can  fix  with  precision  the  cardinal  points  of  a bird’s  wing,  ex- 
tended in  any  fixed  position,  and  can  then  draw  the  curves  of 
its  individual  plumes  without  measurable  error,  has  advanced 
further  towards  a power  of  understanding  the  design  of  the 
great  masters  than  he  could  by  reading  many  volumes  of  crit- 
icism, or  passing  many  months  in  undisciplined  examination 
of  works  of  art. 

Again,  it  will  be  found  that  among  amateur  students  there 
is  almost  universal  deficiency  in  the  power  of  expressing  the 
roundness  of  a surface.  They  frequently  draw  with  consider- 
able dexterity  and  vigour,  but  never  attain  the  slightest  sense 
of  those  modulations  in  form  which  can  only  be  expressed  by 
gradations  in  shade.  They  leave  sharp  edges  to  their  blots  of 
colour,  sharp  angles  in  their  contours  of  lines,  and  conceal 
from  themselves  their  incapacity  of  completion  by  redun- 
dance of  object.  The  assurance  to  such  persons  that  no 
object  could  be  rightly  seen  or  drawn  until  the  draughtsman 
had  acquired  the  power  of  modulating  surfaces  by  gradations 
wrought  with  some  pointed  instrument  (whether  pen,  pencil, 
or  chalk),  would  at  once  prevent  much  vain  labour,  and  put 
an  end  to  many  errors  of  that  worst  kind  which  not  only  re- 


EDUCATION  IN  ART. 


257 


tard  the  student,  but  blind  him  ; which  prevent  him  from  either 
attaining  excellence  himself,  or  understanding  it  in  others. 

It  would  be  easy,  did  time  admit  it,  to  give  instances  of 
other  principles  which  it  is  equally  essential  that  the  student 
should  know,  and  certain  that  all  painters  of  eminence  would 
sanction  ; while  even  those  respecting  which  some  doubt  may 
exist  in  their  application  of  consummate  practice,  are  yet  per- 
fectly determinable,  so  far  as  they  are  needed  to  guide  a be- 
ginner, It  may,  for  instance,  be  a question  how  far  local 
colour  should  be  treated  as  an  element  of  chiaro-oscuro  in  a 
master’s  drawing  of  the  human  form.  But  there  can  be  no 
question  that  it  must  be  so  treated  in  a boy’s  study  of  a tulip 
or  a trout. 

A still  more  important  point  would  be  gained  if  authorita- 
tive testimony  of  the  same  kind  could  be  given  to  the  merit 
and  exclusive  sufficiency  of  any  series  of  examples  of  works  of 
art,  such  as  could  at  once  be  put  within  the  reach  of  masters  of 
schools.  For  the  modern  student  labours  under  heavy  dis- 
advantages in  what  at  first  sight  might  appear  an  assistance 
to  him,  namely,  the  number  of  examples  of  many  different 
styles  which  surround  him  in  galleries  or  museums.  His 
mind  is  disturbed  by  the  inconsistencies  of  various  excellences, 
and  by  his  own  predilection  for  false  beauties  in  second  or 
third-rate  works.  He  is  thus  prevented  from  observing  any 
one  example  long  enough  to  understand  its  merit,  or  follow- 
ing any  one  method  long  enough  to  obtain  facility  in  its  prac- 
tice. It  seems,  therefore,  very  desirable  that  some  such  stand- 
ard of  art  should  be  fixed  for  all  our  schools, — a standard 
which,  it  must  be  remembered,  need  not  necessarily  be  the 
highest  possible,  provided  only  it  is  the  Tightest  possible.  It  is 
not  to  be  hoped  that  the  student  should  imitate  works  of  the 
most  exalted  merit,  but  much  to  be  desired  that  he  should  be 
guided  by  those  which  have  fewest  faults. 

Perhaps,  therefore,  the  most  serviceable  examples  which 
could  be  set  before  youth  might  be  found  in  the  studies  or 
drawings,  rather  than  in  the  pictures,  of  first-rate  masters  ; 
and  the  art  of  photography  enables  us  to  put  renderings  of 
such  studies,  which  for  most  practical  purposes  are  as  good 


258 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


as  the  originals,  on  the  walls  of  every  school  in  the  kingdom. 
Supposing  (I  merely  name  these  as  examples  of  what  I mean) 
the  standard  of  manner  in  light-and-shade  drawing  fixed  by 
Leonardo’s  study,  No.  19,  in  the  collection  of  photographs 
lately  published  from  drawings  in  the  Florence  Gallery  ; 
the  standard  of  pen  drawing  with  a wash,  fixed  by  Titian’s 
sketch  No.  30  in  the  same  collection  ; that  of  etching,  fixed 
by  Rembrandt’s  spotted  shell ; and  that  of  point  work  with 
the  pure  lines,  by  Diirer’s  crest  with  the  cock  ; every  effort  of 
the  pupil,  whatever  the  instrument  in  his  hands,  would  infal- 
libly tend  in  a right  direction,  and  the  perception  of  the  merits 
of  these  four  works,  or  of  any  others  like  them,  once  attained 
thoroughly,  by  efforts,  however  distant  or  despairing,  to  copy 
portions  of  them,  would  lead  securely  in  due  time  to  the  ap- 
preciation of  their  modes  of  excellence. 

I cannot,  of  course,  within  the  limits  of  this  paper,  proceed 
to  any  statement  of  the  present  requirements  of  the  English 
operative  as  regards  art  education.  But  I do  not  regret  this, 
for  it  seems  to  me  very  desirable  that  our  attention  should  for 
the  present  be  concentrated  on  the  more  immediate  object  of 
general  instruction.  Whatever  the  public  demand  the  artist 
will  soon  produce  ; and  the  best  education  which  the  operative 
can  receive  is  the  refusal  of  bad  work  and  the  acknowledg- 
ment of  good.  There  is  no  want  of  genius  among  us,  still 
less  of  industry.  The  least  that  -we  do  is  laborious,  and  the 
•worst  is  wonderful.  Bat  there  is  a want  among  us,  deep  and 
wide,  of  discretion  in  directing  toil,  and  of  delight  in  being 
led  by  imagination.  In  past  time,  though  the  masses  of  the 
nation  were  less  informed  than  they  are  now,  they  were  for 
that  very  reason  simpler  judges  and  happier  gazers  ; it  must 
be  ours  to  substitute  the  gracious  sympathy  of  the  understand- 
ing for  the  bright  gratitude  of  innocence.  An  artist  can  al- 
ways paint  w7ell  for  those  who  are  lightly  pleased  or  wdsely 
displeased,  but  he  cannot  paint  for  those  who  are  dull  in  ap- 
plause and  false  in  condemnation. 


ART  SCHOOL  NOTES. 


259 


REMARKS  ADDRESSED  TO  THE  MANSFIELD  ART 
NIGHT  CLASS,  OCTOBER  14,  1873.* 

It  is  to  be  remembered  that  the  giving  of  prizes  can  only 
be  justified  on  tbe  ground  of  their  being  the  reward  of  supe- 
rior diligence  and  more  obedient  attention  to  the  directions  of 
the  teacher.  They  must  never  be  supposed,  because  practi- 
cally they  never  can  become,  indications  of  superior  genius  ; 
unless  in  so  far  as  genius  is  likely  to  be  diligent  and  obedient, 
beyond  the  strength  and  temper  of  the  dull. 

But  it  so  frequently  happens  that  the  stimulus  of  vanity, 
acting  on  minds  of  inferior  calibre,  produces  for  a time  an  in- 
dustry surpassing  the  tranquil  and  self-possessed  exertion  of 
real  power,  that  it  may  be  questioned  whether  the  custom  of 
bestowing  prizes  at  all  may  not  ultimately  cease  in  our  higher 
Schools  of  Art,  unless  in  the  form  of  substantial  assistance 
given  to  deserving  students  who  stand  in  need  of  it  : a kind 
of  prize,  the  claim  to  which,  in  its  nature,  would  depend  more 
on  accidental  circumstances,  and  generally  good  conduct,  than 
on  genius. 

But,  without  any  reference  to  the  opinion  of  others,  and 
without  any  chance  of  partiality  in  your  own,  there  is  one  test 
by  which  you  can  all  determine  the  rate  of  your  real  progre&s. 

Examine,  after  every  period  of  renewed  industry,  how  far 
you  have  enlarged  your  faculty  of  admiration. 

Consider  how  much  more  you  can  see  to  reverence,  in  the 
work  of  masters  ; and  how  much  more  to  love,  in  the  work  of 
nature. 

This  is  the  only  constant  and  infallible  test  of  progress : 
that  you  winder  more  at  the  work  of  great  men,  and  that  you 
care  more  for  natural  objects. 

You  have  often  been  told  by  your  teachers  to  expect  this 
last  result ; but  I fear  that  the  tendency  of  modern  thought 

* This  address  was  written  for  the  Art  Night  Class,  Mansfield,  but  not 
delivered  by  me.  In  my  absence — I forget  from  what  cause,  but  inev- 
itable— the  Imke  of  St.  Albans  honoured  me  by  reading  it  to  the  meet* 

mg. 


260 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


is  to  reject  the  idea  of  that  essential  difference  in  rank  he« 
tween  one  intellect  and  another,  of  which  increasing  rever- 
ence is  the  wise  acknowledgment. 

You  may,  at  least  in  early  years,  test  accurately  your  power 
of  doing  anything  in  the  least  rightly,  by  your  increasing 
conviction  that  you  never  will  be  able  to  do  it  as  well  as  it  has 
been  done  by  others. 

That  is  a lesson,  I repeat,  which  differs  much,  I fear,  from 
the  one  you  are  commonly  taught.  The  vulgar  and  incom- 
parably false  saying  of  Macaulay’s,  that  the  intellectual  giants 
of  one  age  become  the  intellectual  pigmies  of  the  next,  has 
been  the  text  of  too  many  sermons  lately  preached  to  you. 

You  think  you  are  going  to  do  better  things — each  of  you — 
than  Titian  and  Phidias — write  better  than  Virgil — think  more 
wisely  than  Solomon. 

My  good  young  people,  this  is  the  foolishest,  quite  pre-em- 
inently— perhaps  almost  the  harmfullest — notion  that  could 
possibly  be  put  into  your  empty  little  eggshells  of  heads. 
There  is  not  one  in  a million  of  you  who  can  ever  be  great  in 
any  thing.  To  be  greater  than  the  greatest  that  have  been,  is 
permitted  perhaps  to  one  man  in  Europe  in  the  course  of  two 
or  three  centuries.  But  because  you  cannot  be  Handel  and 
Mozart — is  it  any  reason  why  you  should  not  learn  to  sing 
God  save  the  Queen  ” properly,  when  you  have  a mind  to  ? 
Because  a girl  cannot  be  prima  donna  in  the  Italian  Opera,  is 
it  any  reason  that  she  should  not  learn  to  play  a jig  for  her 
brothers  and  sisters  in  good  time,  or  a soft  little  tune  for  her 
tired  mother,  or  that  she  should  not  sing  to  please  herself, 
among  the  dew,  on  a May  morning  ? Believe  me,  joy,  humil- 
ity, and  usefulness  always  go  together  : as  insolence  with  mis- 
ery, and  these  both  with  destructiveness.  You  may  learn  with 
proud  teachers  how  to  throw  down  the  Vendome  Column,  and 
burn  the  Louvre,  but  never  how  to  lay  so  much  as  one  touch 
of  safe  colour,  or  one  layer  of  steady  stone  : and  if  indeed 
there  be  among  you  a youth  of  true  genius,  be  assured  that  he 
will  distinguish  himself  first,  not  by  petulance  or  by  disdain, 
but  by  discerning  firmly  what  to  admire,  and  whom  to  obey. 

It  will,  I hope,  be  the  result  of  the  interest  lately  awakened 


ART  SCHOOL  NOTES. 


261 


in  art  through  our  provinces,  to  enable  each  town  of  impor- 
tance to  obtain,  in  permanent  possession,  a few — and  it  is  de- 
sirable there  should  be  no  more  than  a few — examples  of  con- 
summate and  masterful  art : an  engraving  or  two  by  D'rirer — 
a single  portrait  by  Reynolds — a fifteenth-century  Florentine 
drawing — a thirteenth-century  French  piece  of  painted  glass, 
and  the  like  ; and  that,  in  every  town  occupied  in  a given 
manufacture,  examples  of  unquestionable  excellence  in  that 
manufacture  should  be  made  easily  accessible  in  its  civic 
museum. 

I must  ask  you,  however,  to  observe  very  carefully  that  I 
use  the  word  manufacture  in  its  literal  and  proper  sense.  It 
means  the  making  of  things  by  the  hand.  It  does  not  mean 
the  making  them  by  machinery.  And,  while  I plead  with  you 
for  a true  humility  in  rivalship  with  the  works  of  others,  I 
plead  with  you  also  for  a just  pride  in  what  you  really  can 
honestly  do  yourself. 

You  must  neither  think  your  work  the  best  ever  done  by 
man  : — nor,  on  the  other  hand,  think  that  the  tongs  and  poker 
can  do  better — and  that,  although  you  are  wiser  than  Solo- 
mon, all  this  wisdom  of  yours  can  be  outshone  by  a shovel- 
ful of  coke. 

Let  me  take,  for  instance,  the  manufacture  of  lace,  for 
which,  I believe,  your  neighbouring  town  of  Nottingham  en- 
joys renown.  There  is  still  some  distinction  between  machine- 
made  and  hand-made  lace.  I will  suppose  that  distinction  so 
far  done  awTay  with,  that,  a pattern  once  invented,  you  can 
spin  lace  as  fast  as  you  now  do  thread.  Everybody  then 
might  wear,  not  only  lace  collars,  but  lace  gowns.  Do  you 
think  they  would  be  more  comfortable  in  them  than  they  are 
now  in  plain  stuff — or  that,  when  everybody  could  wear  them, 
anybody  would  be  proud  of  wearing  one  ? A spider  may  per- 
haps be  rationally  proud  of  his  own  cobweb,  even  though  all 
the  fields  in  the  morning  are  covered  with  the  like,  for  he 
made  it  himself — but  suppose  a machine  spun  it  for  him  ? 

Suppose  all  the  gossamer  were  Nottingham-made,  would  a 
sensible  spider  be  either  prouder,  or  happier,  think  3rou  ? 

A sensible  spider  ! You  cannot  perhaps  imagine  such  a 


262 


A JOT  FOR  EVER. 


creature.  Yet  surely  a spider  is  clever  enough  for  his  own 
ends? 

You  think  him  an  insensible  spider,  only  because  he  cannot 
understand  yours — and  is  apt  to  impede  yours.  Well,  be  as- 
sured of  this  : sense  in  human  creatures  is  shown  also,  not  by 
cleverness  in  promoting  their  own  ends  and  interests,  but  by 
quickness  in  understanding  other  people’s  ends  and  interests, 
and  by  putting  our  own  work  and  keeping  our  own  wishes  in 
harmony  with  theirs. 

But  I return  to  my  point,  of  cheapness.  You  don’t  think 
that  it  would  be  convenient,  or  even  creditable,  for  women  to 
wash  the  doorsteps  or  dish  the  dinners  in  lace  gowns  ? Nay, 
even  for  the  most  ladylike  occupations — reading,  or  writing, 
or  playing  with  her  children — do  you  think  a lace  gown,  or 
even  a lace  collar,  so  great  an  advantage  or  dignity  to  a woman  ? 
If  you  think  of  it,  you  will  find  the  whole  value  of  lace,  as  a 
possession,  depends  on  the  fact  of  its  having  a beauty  which 
has  been  the  reward  of  industry  and  attention. 

That  the  thing  itself  is  a prize — a thing  which  everybody 
cannot  have.  That  it  proves  by  the  look  of  it,  the  ability  of  its 
maker ; that  it  proves,  by  the  rarity  of  it,  the  dignity  of  its 
wearer — either  that  she  has  been  so  industrious  as  to  save 
money,  which  can  buy,  say,  a piece  of  jewellery,  of  gold  tissue, 
or  of  fine  lace — or  else,  that  she  is  a noble  person,  to  whom 
her  neighbours  concede,  as  an  honour,  the  privilege  of  wear- 
ing finer  dress  than  they. 

If  they  all  choose  to  have  lace  too — if  it  ceases  to  be  a prize 
— it  becomes,  does  it  not,  only  a cobweb  ? 

The  real  good  of  a piece  of  lace,  then,  you  will  find,  is  that 
it  should  show,  first,  that  the  designer  of  it  had  a pretty  fancy ; 
next,  that  the  maker  of  it  had  fine  fingers ; lastly,  that  the 
wearer  of  it  has  worthiness  or  dignity  enough  to  obtain  what 
is  difficult  to  obtain,  and  common  sense  enough  not  to  wear 
it  on  all  occasions.  I limit  myself,  in  what  farther  I have  to 
say,  to  the  question  of  the  manufacture — nay,  of  one  requisite 
in  the  manufacture  : that  which  I have  just  called  a pretty 
fancy. 

What  do  you  suppose  I mean  by  a pretty  fancy  ? Do  you 


ART  SCHOOL  NOTES . 


263 


think  that,  by  learning  to  draw,  and  looking  at  flowers,  yon 
will  ever  get  the  ability  to  design  a piece  of  lace  beautifully? 
By  no  means.  If  that  were  so,  everybody  would  soon  learn 
to  draw — everybody  would  design  lace  prettily — and  then,— 
nobody  would  be  paid  for  designing  it.  To  some  extent,  that 
will  indeed  be  the  result  of  modern  endeavour  to  teach  de- 
sign. But  against  all  such  endeavours,  mother-wit,  in  the  end, 
will  hold  her  own. 

But  anybody  who  has  this  mother-wit,  may  make  the  exercise 
of  it  more  pleasant  to  themselves,  and  more  useful  to  other 
people,  by  learning  to  draw. 

An  Indian  worker  in  gold,  or  a Scandinavian  worker  in  iron, 
or  an  old  French  worker  in  thread,  could  produce  indeed 
beautiful  designs  out  of  nothing  but  groups  of  knots  and  spi- 
rals ; but  you,  when  you  are  rightly  educated,  may  render  your 
knots  and  spirals  infinitely  more  interesting  by  making  them 
suggestive  of  natural  forms,  and  rich  in  elements  of  true 
knowledge. 

You  know,  for  instance,  the  pattern  which  for  centuries  has 
been  the  basis  of  ornament  in  Indian  shawls — the  bulging  leaf 
ending  in  a spiral.  The  Indian  produces  beautiful  designs 
with  nothing  but  that  spiral.  You  cannot  better  his  powers 
of  design,  but  you  make  them  more  civil  and  useful  by  add- 
ing knowledge  of  nature  to  invention. 

Suppose  you  learn  to  draw  rightly,  and,  therefore,  to  know 
correctly  the  spirals  of  springing  ferns — not  that  you  may 
give  ugly  names  to  all  the  species  of  them — but  that  you  may 
understand  the  grace  and  vitality  of  every  hour  of  their  exist- 
ence. Suppose  you  have  sense  and  cleverness  enough  to 
translate  the  essential  character  of  this  beauty  into  forms  ex- 
pressible by  simple  lines — therefore  expressible  by  thread— 
you  might  then  have  a series  of  fern-patterns  which  would 
each  contain  points  of  distinctive  interest  and  beauty,  and  of 
scientific  truth,  and  yet  be  variable  by  fancy,  with  quite  as 
much  ease  as  the  meaningless  Indian  one.  Similarly,  there  is 
no  form  of  leaf,  of  flower,  or  of  insect,  which  might  not  be- 
come suggestive  to  you,  and  expressible  in  terms  of  manufacb 
ure,  so  as  to  be  interesting,  and  useful  to  others. 


264 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


Only  don’t  think  that  this  kind  of  study  will  ever  “pay,”  iq 
the  vulgar  sense. 

It  will  make  you  wiser  and  happier.  But  do  you  suppose 
that  it  is  the  law  of  God,  or  nature,  that  people  shall  be  paid 
in  money  for  becoming  wiser  and  happier  ? They  are  so,  by 
that  law,  for  honest  work  ; and  as  all  honest  work  makes  peo- 
ple wiser  and  happier,  they  are  indeed,  in  some  so£t,  paid  in 
money  for  becoming  wise. 

But  if  you  seek  wisdom  only  that  you  may  get  money,  be- 
lieve me,  you  are  exactly  on  the  foolisliest  of  all  fools’  errands. 
“ She  is  more  precious  than  rubies”™— but  do  you  think  that 
is  only  because  she  will  help  you  to  buy  rubies  ? 

“ All  the  things  thou  canst  desire  are  not  to  be  compared 
to  her.”  Do  you  think  that  is  only  because  she  will  enable 
you  to  get  all  the  things  you  desire  ? She  is  offered  to  you 
as  a blessing  in  herself.  She  is  the  reward  of  kindness,  of 
modesty,  of  industry.  She  is  the  Prize  of  Prizes — and  alike 
in  poverty  or  in  riches — the  strength  of  your  Life  now,  the 
earnest  of  whatever  Life  is  to  come. 


SOCIAL  POLICY. 

BASED  ON  NATURAL  SELECTION. 

Paper  read  before  the  Metaphysical  Society , May  1 P7i,  1875.* 

It  has  always  seemed  to  me  that  Societies  like  this  of  ours, 
happy  in  including  members  not  a little  diverse  in  thought 
and  various  in  knowledge,  might  be  more  useful  to  the  pub- 
lic than  perhaps  they  can  fairly  be  said  to  have  approved 
themselves  hitherto,  by  using  their  variety  of  power  rather  to 
support  intellectual  conclusions  by  concentric  props,  than  to 
shake  them  with  rotatory  stones  of  wit ; and  modestly  en- 
deavouring to  initiate  the  building  of  walls  for  the  Bridal  city 
of  Science,  in  which  no  man  will  care  to  identify  the  particular 

* I trust  that  the  Society  will  not  consider  its  privileges  violated  by 
the  publication  of  an  essay,  which,  for  such  audience,  I wrote  with  more 
than  ordinary  care. 


THE  BASIS  OF  SOCIAL  POLICY. 


265 

stones  he  lays,  rather  than  complying  farther  with  the  exist- 
ing picturesque,  but  wasteful,  practice  of  every  knight  to 
throw  up  a feudal  tower  of  his  own  opinions,  tenable  only  by 
the  most  active  pugnacity,  and  pierced  rather  with  arrow- 
slits  from  which  to  annoy  his  neighbours,  than  windows  to 
admit  light  or  air. 

The  paper  read  at  our  last  meeting  was  unquestionably, 
within  the  limits  its  writer  has  prescribed  to  himself,  so  logi- 
cally sound,  that  (encouraged  also  by  the  suggestion  of  some 
of  our  most  influential  members),  I shall  endeavour  to  make 
the  matter  of  our  to-night’s  debate  consequent  upon  it,  and 
suggestive  of  possibly  further  advantageous  deductions. 

It  will  be  remembered  that,  in  reference  to  the  statement 
in  the  Bishop  of  Peterborough’s  Paper,  of  the  moral  indiffer- 
ence of  certain  courses  of  conduct  on  the  postulate  of  the  ex- 
istence only  of  a Mechanical  base  of  Morals,  it  was  observed 
by  Dr.  Adam  Clarke  that,  even  on  such  mechanical  basis,  the 
wrord  “ moral  ” might  still  be  applied  specially  to  any  course 
of  action  which  tended  to  the  development  of  the  human 
race.  Whereupon  I ventured  myself  to  inquire,  in  what  di- 
rection such  development  was  to  be  understood  as  taking- 
place  ; and  the  discussion  of  this  j3oint  being  then  dropped 
for  want  of  time,  I would  ask  the  Society’s  permission  to 
bring  it  again  before  them  this  evening  in  a somewhat  more 
extended  form  ; for  in  reality  the  question  respecting  the  de- 
velopment of  men  is  twofold, — first,  namely, — in  what  direc- 
tion ; and  secondly,  in  what  social  relations,  it  is  to  be  sought. 

I would  therefore  at  present  ask  more  deliberately  than  I 
could  at  our  last  meeting, — first,  in  what  direction  it  is  de- 
sirable that  the  development  of  humanity  should  take  place  ? 
Should  it,  for  instance,  as  in  Greece,  be  of  physical  beauty, 
— emulation,  (Hesiod’s  second  Eris), — pugnacity  and  patriot- 
ism ? or,  as  in  modern  England,  of  physical  ugliness, — envy, 
(Hesiod’s  first  Eris), — cowardice,  and  selfishness?  or,  as  by 
a conceivably  humane  but  hitherto  unexampled — education 
might  be  attempted,  of  physical  beauty,  humility,  courage, 
and  affection,  which  should  make  all  the  world  one  native 
land,  and  iraaa  yrj  ra<£os? 


266 


A JOY  FOR  EVER. 


I do  not  doubt  but  that  the  first  automatic  impulse  of  all 
our  automatic  friends  here  present,  on  hearing  this  sentence, 
will  be  strenuously  to  deny  the  accuracy  of  my  definition  of 
the  aims  of  modern  English  education.  Without  attempting 
to  defend  it,  I would  only  observe  that  this  automatic  develop- 
ment of  solar  caloric  in  scientific  minds  must  be  grounded  on 
an  automatic  sensation  of  injustice  done  to  the  members  of 
the  School  Board,  as  well  as  to  many  other  automatically  well- 
meaning  and  ingenious  persons  ; and  that  this  sense  of  the  in- 
juriousness and  offensiveness  of  my  definition  cannot  possibly 
have  any  other  basis  (if  I may  be  permitted  to  continue  my 
professional  similitudes)  than  the  fallen  remnants  and  goodly 
stones,  not  one  now  left  on  another,  but  still  forming  an  un- 
removable cumulus  of  ruin,  and  eternal  Birs  Nimroud,  as  it 
were,  on  the  site  of  the  old  belfry  of  Christian  morality,  whose 
top  looked  once  so  like  touching  Heaven. 

For  no  offence  could  be  taken  at  my  definition,  unless  trace- 
able to  adamantine  conviction, — that  ugliness,  however  inde- 
finable, envy,  however  natural,  and  cowardice,  however  com- 
mercially profitable,  are  nevertheless  eternally  disgraceful ; 
contrary,  that  is  to  say,  to  the  grace  of  our  Lord  Christ,  if 
there  be  among  us  any  Christ ; to  the  grace  of  the  King’s 
Majesty,  if  there  be  among  us  any  King ; and  to  the  grace 
even  of  Christless  and  Kingless  Manhood,  if  there  be  among 
us  any  Manhood. 

To  this  fixed  conception  of  a difference  between  Better  and 
Worse,  or,  when  carried  to  the  extreme,  between  good  and 
evil,  in  conduct,  we  all,  it  seems  to  me,  instinctively  and  there- 
fore rightly,  attach  the  term  of  Moral  sense  ; — the  sense,  for 
instance,  that  it  would  be  better  if  the  members  of  this  Society 
who  are  usually  automatically  absent  were,  instead,  automati- 
cally present ; or  better,  that  this  Paper,  if  (which  is,  perhaps, 
too  likely)  it  be  thought  automatically  impertinent,  had  been 
made,  by  the  molecular  action  of  my  cerebral  particles,  pertinent. 

Trusting,  therefore,  without  more  ado,  to  the  strength  of 
rampart  in  this  Old  Sarum  of  the  Moral  sense,  however  sub- 
dued into  vague  banks  under  the  modern  steam-plough,  I wifi 
venture  to  suppose  the  first  of  my  two  questions  to  have  been 


THE  BASIS  OF  SOCIAL  POLICY. 


267 


answered  by  the  choice  on  the  part  at  least  of  a majority  of 
our  Council,  of  the  third  direction  of  development,  above 
specified  as  being  the  properly  called  “ moral  ” one  ; and  will 
go  on  to  the  second  subject  of  inquiry,  both  more  difficult  and 
of  great  practical  importance  in  the  political  crisis  through 
which  Europe  is  passing, — namely,  what  relations  between 
men  are  to  be  desired,  or  with  resignation  allowed,  in  the 
course  of  their  Moral  Development  ? i 

Whether,  that  is  to  say,  we  should  try  to  make  some  men 
beautiful  at  the  cost  of  ugliness  in  others,  and  some  men  vir- 
tuous at  the  cost  of  vice  in  others, — or  rather,  all  men  beau- 
tiful and  virtuous  in  the  degree  possible  to  each  under  a 
system  of  equitable  education  ? And  evidently  our  first  busi- 
ness is  to  consider  in  what  terms  the  choice  is  put  to  us  by 
Nature.  What  can  we  do,  if  we  would  ? What  must  we  do, 
whether  we  will  or  not  ? Howr  high  can  wre  raise  the  level  of 
a diffused  Learning  and  Morality?  and  how  far  shall  we  be 
compelled,  if  we  limit,  to  exaggerate  the  advantages  and 
injuries  of  our  system?  And  are  we  prepared,  if  the  ex- 
tremity be  inevitable,  to  push  to  their  utmost  the  relations 
implied  when  we  take  off  our  hats  to  each  other,  and  triple 
the  tiara  of  the  Saint  in  Heaven,  while  we  leave  the  sinner 
bareheaded  in  Cocytus  ? 

It  is  well,  perhaps,  that  I should  at  once  confess  myself  to 
hold  the  principle  of  limitation  in  its  utmost  extent ; and  to 
entertain  no  doubt  of  the  rightness  of  my  ideal,  but  only  of 
its  feasibility.  I am  ill  at  ease,  for  instance,  in  my  uncer- 
tainty whether  our  greatly  regretted  Chairman  wdll  ever  be 
Pope,  or  whether  some  people  whom  I could  mention,  (not, 
of  course,  members  of  our  society,)  will  ever  be  in  Cocytus. 

But  there  is  no  need,  if  we  would  be  candid,  to  debate  the 
principle  in  the  violences  of  operation,  any  more  than  the 
proper  methods  of  distributing  food,  on  the  supposition  that 
the  difference  between  a Paris  dinner  and  a platter  of  Scotch 
porridge  must  imply  that  one-half  of  mankind  are  to  die  of 
eating,  and  the  rest  of  having  nothing  to  eat.  I will,  therefore, 
take  for  example  a case  in  which  the  discrimination  is  less 
conclusive. 


2G8 


A JOY  FOR  AVER. 


When  I stop  writing  metaphysics  this  morning,  it  will  be 
to  arrange  some  drawings  for  a young  lady  to  copy.  They 
are  leaves  of  the  best  illuminated  MSS.  I have,  and  I am  going 
to  spend  my  whole  afternoon  in  explaining  to  her  what  she  is 
to  aim  at  in  copying  them. 

Now,  I would  not  lend  these  leaves  to  any  other  young 
lady  that  I know  of ; nor  give  up  my  afternoon  to,  perhaps, 
more  than  two  or  three  other  young  ladies  that  I know  of. 
But  to  keep  to  the  first-instanced  one,  I lend  her  my  books, 
and  give  her,  for  what  they  are  worth,  my  time  and  most 
careful  teaching,  because  she  at  present  paints  butterflies  bet- 
ter than  any  other  girl  I know,  and  has  a peculiar  capacity  for 
the  softening  of  plumes  and  finessing  of  antennae.  Grant  me 
to  be  a good  teacher,  and  grant  her  disposition  to  be  such  as  I 
suppose,  and  the  result  will  be  what  might  at  first  appear  an 
indefensible  iniquity,  namely,  that  this  girl,  who  has  already 
excellent  gifts,  having  also  excellent  teaching,  will  become 
perhaps  the  best  butterfly-painter  in  England  ; while  myriads 
of  other  girls,  having  originally  inferior  powers,  and  attract- 
ing no  attention  from  the  Slade  Professor,  will  utterly  lose 
their  at  present  cultivable  faculties  of  entomological  art,  and 
sink  into  the  vulgar  career  of  wives  and  mothers,  to  which  we 
have  Mr.  Mill’s  authority  for  holding  it  a grievous  injustice 
that  any  girl  should  be  irrevocably  condemned. 

There  is  no  need  that  I should  be  careful  in  enumerating 
the  various  modes,  analogous  to  this,  in  which  the  Natural 
selection  of  which  we  have  lately  heard,  perhaps,  somewhat 
more  than  enough,  provokes  and  approves  the  Professional 
selection  which  I am  so  bold  as  to  defend  ; and  if  the  auto- 
matic instincts  of  equity  in  us,  which  revolt  against  the  great 
ordinance  of  Nature  and  practice  of  Man  that  “to  him  that 
hath,  shall  more  be  given,”  are  to  be  listened  to  when  the 
possessions  in  question  are  only  of  wisdom  and  virtue,  let 
them  at  least  prove  their  sincerity  by  correcting,  first,  the  in- 
justice which  has  established  itself  respecting  more  tangible 
and  more  esteemed  property  ; and  terminating  the  singular 
arrangement  prevalent  in  commercial  Europe,  that  to  every 
man  with  a hundred  pounds  in  his  pocket  there  shall  annually 


THE  BASIS  OF  SOCIAL  POLICY.  269 

be  given  three,  to  every  man  with  a thousand  thirty,  and  to 
every  man  with  nothing,  none. 

I am  content  here  to  leave  under  the  scrutiny  of  the  even- 
ing my  general  statement  that  as  human  development,  when 
moral,  is  with  special  effort  in  a given  direction,  so,  -when 
moral,  it  is  with  special  effort  in  favour  of  a limited  class ; 
but  I yet  trespass  for  a few  moments  on  your  patience  in 
order  to  note  that  the  acceptance  of  this  second  principle  still 
leaves  it  to  what  point  the  disfavour  of  the  reprobate  class,  or 
the  privileges  of  the  elect,  may  advisably  extend.  For  I can- 
not but  feel  for  my  own  part,  as  if  the  daily  bread  of  moral 
instruction  might  at  least  be  so  widely  broken  among  the 
multitudes  as  to  preserve  them  from  utter  destitution  and 
pauperism  in  virtue  ; and  that  even  the  simplest  and  lowest  of 
the  rabble  should  not  be  so  absolutely  sons  of  perdition,  but 
that  each  might  say  for  himself, — “ For  my  part — no  offence 
to  the  General,  or  any  man  of  quality — I hope  to  be  saved.” 
Whereas  it  is,  on  the  contrary,  implied  by  the  habitual  ex- 
pressions of  the  wisest  aristocrats,  that  the  completely  devel- 
oped persons  whose  Justice  and  Fortitude — poles  to  the 
Cardinal  points  of  virtue— are  marked  as  their  sufficient  char- 
acteristics by  the  great  Roman  moralist  in  his  phrase,  “ Justus, 
et  tenax  propositi,”  will  in  the  course  of  nature  be  opposed 
by  a civic  ardour,  not  merely  of  the  innocent  and  ignorant, 
but  of  persons  developed  in  a contrary  direction  to  that 
which  I have  ventured  to  call  “moral,”  and  therefore  not 
merely  incapable  of  desiring  or  applauding  what  is  right,  but 
in  an  evil  harmony,  pram  jubentium,  clamorously  demanding 
what  is  wrong. 

The  point  to  which  both  Natural  and  Divine  Selection 
would  permit  us  to  advance  in  severity  towards  this  profane 
class,  to  which  the  enduring  “Ecce  Homo,”  or  manifestation 
of  any  properly  human  sentiment  or  person,  must  always  be 
instinctively  abominable,  seem  to  be  conclusively  indicated  by 
the  order  following  on  the  parable  of  the  Talents, — “Those 
mine  enemies,  bring  hither,  and  slay  them  before  me.”  Not 
does  it  seem  reasonable,  on  the  other  hand,  to  set  the  limits 
of  favouritism  more  narrowly.  For  even  if,  among  fallible 


270 


A JOT  FOR  EVER . 


mortals,  there  may  frequently  be  ground  for  the  hesitation  of 
just  men  to  award  the  punishment  of  death  to  their  enemies, 
the  most  beautiful  story,  to  my  present  knowledge,  of  all  an- 
tiquity, that  of  Cleobis  and  Bito,  might  suggest  to  them  the 
fitness,  on  some  occasions,  of  distributing  without  any  hesita- 
tion the  reward  of  death  to  their  friends.  For  sure  the  logi- 
cal conclusion  of  the  Bishop  of  Peterborough,  respecting  the 
treatment  due  to  old  women  who  have  nothing  supernatural 
about  them,  holds  with  still  greater  force  when  applied  to  the 
case  of  old  women  wrho  have  everything  supernatural  about 
them  ; and  while  it  might  remain  questionable  to  some  of  us, 
whether  we  had  any  right  to  deprive  an  invalid  who  had  no 
soul  of  wThat  might  still  remain  to  her  of  even  painful  earthly 
existence,  it  would  surely  on  the  most  religious  grounds  be 
both  our  privilege  and  our  duty,  at  once  to  dismiss  any  troub- 
lesome sufferer  who  had  a soul  to  the  distant  and  inoffensive 
felicities  of  heaven. 

But  I believe  my  hearers  will  approve  me  in  again  declin- 
ing to  disturb  the  serene  confidence  of  daily  action  by  these 
speculations  in  extreme ; the  really  useful  conclusion,  which  it 
seems  to  me,  cannot  be  evaded,  is  that  without  going  so  far 
as  the  exile  of  the  inconveniently  wicked,  and  translation  of 
the  inconveniently  sick,  to  their  proper  spiritual  mansions, 
we  should  at  least  be  certain  that  we  do  not  waste  care  in 
protracting  disease  which  might  have  been  spent  in  preserv- 
ing health  ; that  we  do  not  appease  in  the  splendour  of  our 
turreted  hospitals  the  feelings  of  compassion  which,  rightly 
directed,  might  have  prevented  the  need  of  them  ; nor  pride 
ourselves  on  the  peculiar  form  of  Christian  benevolence  which 
leaves  the  cottage  roofless  to  model  the  prison,  and  spends  it- 
self with  zealous  preference  where,  in  the  keen  words  of  Car- 
lyle, if  you  desire  the  material  on  which  maximum  expendi- 
ture of  means  and  effort  will  produce  the  minimum  result, 
“ here  you  accurately  have  it.” 

I cannot  but,  in  conclusion,  most  respectfully,  but  most  ear- 
nestly, express  my  hope  that  measures  may  be  soon  taken  by 
the  Lords  Spiritual  of  England  to  assure  her  doubting  mind 
of  the  real  existence  of  that  supernatural  revelation  of  the 


THE  BASIS  OF  SOCIAL  POLICY. 


271 


basis  of  morals  to  which  the  Bishop  of  Peterborough  referred 
in  the  close  of  his  paper  ; or  at  least  to  explain  to  her  bewil- 
dered populace  the  real  meaning  of  the  force  of  the  Ten  Com- 
mandments, whether  written  originally  by  the  finger  of  God 
or  Man.  To  me,  personally,  I own,  as  one  of  that  bewildered 
populace,  that  the  essay  by  one  of  our  most  distinguished 
members  on  the  Creed  of  Christendom  seems  to  stand  in 
need  of  explicit  answer  from  our  Divines  ; but  if  not,  and  the 
common  application  of  the  terms  “ Word  of  God  ” to  the 
books  of  Scripture  be  against  all  questions  tenable,  it  becomes 
yet  more  imperative  on  the  interpreters  of  that  Scripture 
to  see  that  they  are  not  made  void  by  our  traditions,1  and 
that  the  Mortal  sins  of  Covetousness,  Fraud,  Usury,  and  Con- 
tention be  not  the  essence  of  a National  life  orally  pro- 
fessing  submission  to  the  laws  of  Christ,  and  satisfaction  in 
His  Love. 

J.  Buskin. 

1 “ Thou  shalt  not  covet ; but  tradition 
Approves  all  forms  of  Competition.  ” 

Arthur  Clough. 


TSB 


- . ; . I 

• : • - • 

O': - 

' 

. 

- 

. 


V - «fF 


OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US 


SKETCHES  OF  THE  HISTORY  OF  CHRISTENDOM  FOR  BOYS  AND 
GIRLS  WHO  HAVE  BEEN  HELD  AT  ITS  FONTS 


l 


PREFACE. 


The  long  abandoned  purpose,  of  which  the  following  pages 
begin  some  attempt  at  fulfilment,  has  been  resumed  at  the  re- 
quest of  a young  English  governess,  that  I would  write  some 
pieces  of  history  which  her  pupils  could  gather  some  good 
out  of  ; — the  fruit  of  historical  documents  placed  by  modern 
educational  systems  at  her  disposal,  being  to  them  labour 
only,  and  sorrow. 

What  else  may  be  said  for  the  book,  if  it  ever  become  one, 
it  must  say  for  itself : preface,  more  than  this,  I do  not  care 
to  write  : and  the  less,  because  some  passages  of  British  his- 
tory, at  this  hour  under  record,  call  for  instant,  though  brief, 
comment. 

I am  told  that  the  Queens  Guards  have  gone  to  Ireland  ; 
playing  “ God  save  the  Queen.”  And  being,  (as  I have  de- 
clared myself  in  the  course  of  some  letters  to  which  public 
attention  has  been  lately  more  than  enough  directed,)  to  the 
best  of  my  knowledge,  the  staunchest  Conservative  in  Eng- 
land, I am  disposed  gravely  to  question  the  propriety  of  the 
mission  of  the  Queen’s  Guards  on  the  employment  commanded 
them.  My  own  Conservative  notion  of  the  function  of  the 
Guards  is  that  they  should  guard  the  Queen’s  throne  and  life, 
when  threatened  either  by  domestic  or  foreign  enemy : but 
not  that  they  should  become  a substitute  for  her  inefficient 
police  force,  in  the  execution  of  her  domiciliary  laws. 

And  still  less  so,  if  the  domiciliary  laws  which  they  are  sent 
to  execute,  playing  “ God  save  the  Queen,”  be  perchance  pre- 
cisely contrary  to  that  God  the  Saviour’s  law  ; and  therefore, 
such  as,  in  the  long  run,  no  quantity  either  of  Queens,  or 
Queen’s  men,  could  execute.  Which  is  a question  I have  for 


276 


PREFACE. 


these  ten  years  been  endeavouring  to  get  the  British  public 
to  consider — vainly  enough  hitherto  ; and  will  not  at  present 
add  to  my  own  many  words  on  the  matter.  But  a book  has 
just  been  published  by  a British  officer,  who,  if  he  had  not 
been  otherwise  and  more  actively  employed,  could  not  only 
have  written  all  my  books  about  landscape  and  picture,  but  is 
very  singularly  also  of  one  mind  with  me,  (God  knows  of  how 
few  Englishmen  I can  now  say  so,)  on  matters  regarding  the 
Queen’s  safety,  and  the  Nation’s  honour.  Of  whose  book 
(“Far  out : Rovings  retold”),  since  various  passages  will  be 
given  in  my  subsequent  terminal  notes,  I will  content  myself 
with  quoting  for  the  end  of  my  Preface  the  memorable  words 
which  Colonel  Butler  himself  quotes,  as  spoken  to  the  British 
Parliament  by  its  last  Conservative  leader,  a British  officer 
who  had  also  served  with  honour  and  success. 

The  Duke  of  Wellington  said  : “It  is  already  well  known 
to  your  Lordships  that  of  the  troops  which  our  gracious  Sov- 
ereign did  me  the  honour  to  entrust  to  my  command  at  vari- 
ous periods  during  the  war — a war  undertaken  for  the  ex- 
press purpose  of  securing  the  happy  institutions  and  inde- 
pendence of  the  country — at  least  one  half  were  Roman 
Catholics.  My  Lords,  when  I call  your  recollection  to  this 
fact,  I am  sure  all  further  eulogy  is  unnecessary.  Your  Lord- 
ships  are  well  aware  for  what  length  of  period  and  under 
what  difficult  circumstances  they  maintained  the  Empire 
buoyant  upon  the  flood  which  overwhelmed  the  thrones  and 
wrecked  the  institutions  of  every  other  people  ; — how  they 
kept  alive  the  only  spark  of  freedom  which  was  left  unextin- 
guished in  Europe.  . . . My  Lords,  it  is  mainly  to  the  Irish 
Catholics  that  we  ail  owe  our  proud  predominance  in  our 
military  career,  and  that  I personally  am  indebted  for  the 
laurels  with  which  you  have  been  pleased  to  decorate  my 
brow.  . . . We  must  confess,  my  Lords,  that  without  Catho- 
lic blood  and  Catholic  valour  no  victory  could  ever  have  been 
obtained,  and  the  first  military  talents  might  have  been  ex- 
erted in  vain.” 

Let  these  noble  words  of  tender  Justice  be  the  first  exam- 
ple to  my  young  readers  of  what  all  History  ought  to  be.  It 


PREFACE. 


277 


has  been  told  them,  in  the  Laws  of  Fe3ole,  that  all  great  Art 
is  Praise.  So  is  all  faithful  History,  and  all  high  Philosophy. 
For  these  three,  Art,  History,  and  Philosophy,  are  each  but 
one  part  of  the  Heavenly  Wisdom,  which  sees  not  as  man 
seeth,  but  with  Eternal  Charity  ; and  because  she  rejoices  not 
in  Iniquity,  therefore  rejoices  in  the  Truth. 

For  true  knowledge  is  of  Virtues  only : of  poisons  and  vices, 
it  is  Hecate  who  teaches,  not  Athena.  And  of  all  wisdom, 
chiefly  the  Politician’s  must  consist  in  this  divine  Prudence  ; 
it  is  not,  indeed,  always  necessary  for  men  to  know  the  vir- 
tues of  their  friends,  or  their  masters  ; since  the  friend  will 
still  manifest,  and  the  master  use.  But  woe  to  the  Nation 
which  is  too  cruel  to  cherish  the  virtue  of  its  subjects,  and 
too  cowardly  to  recognize  that  of  its  enemies ! 


' 

■ ; ■ . .v  i.-i  pj.al  ;ii 

■ 

■ • . • > r i )i 


- . . .0 


i , . : i..,- 


PLATE  I. — THE  DYNASTIES  OF  FRANCE. — To  the  close  of  the  Tenth  Century, 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS, 


CHAPTER  I. 

BY  THE  RIVERS  OF  WATERS. 

The  inteiligent  English  traveller,  in  this  fortunate  age  for 
him,  is  aware  that,  half-way  between  Boulogne  and  Paris, 
there  is  a complex  railway-station,  into  which  his  train,  in  its 
relaxing  speed,  rolls  him  with  many  more  than  the  average 
number  of  bangs  and  bumps  prepared,  in  the  access  of  every 
important  French  gare,  to  startle  the  drowsy  or  distrait  pas- 
senger into  a sense  of  his  situation. 

He  probably  also  remembers  that  at  this  halting-place  in 
mid-journey  there  is  a well-served  buffet,  at  which  he  has 
the  privilege  of  “ Dix  minutes  d’arret.” 

He  is  not,  however,  always  so  distinctly  conscious  that 
these  ten  minutes  of  arrest  are  granted  to  him  within  not  so 
many  minutes’  walk  of  the  central  square  of  a city  which  was 
once  the  Venice  of  France. 

Putting  the  lagoon  islands  out  of  question,  the  French 
Biver-Queen  was  nearly  as  large  in  compass  as  Venice  her- 
self ; and  divided,  not  by  slow  currents  of  ebbing  and  return- 
ing tide,  but  by  eleven  beautiful  trc  ut-streams,  of  which  some 
four  or  five  are  as  large,  each  separately,  as  our  Surrey  Wan- 
dle,  or  as  Isaac  Walton’s  Dove  ; and  which,  branching  out  of 
one  strong  current  above  the  city,  and  uniting  again  after 
they  have  eddied  through  its  streets,  are  bordered,  as  they 
flow  down,  (fordless  except  where  the  two  Edwards  rode 
them,  the  day  before  Crecy,)  to  the  sands  of  St.  Valery,  by 
groves  of  aspen,  and  glades  of  poplar,  whose  grace  and  glad- 


280 


“OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US. 


ness  seem  to  spring  in  every  stately  avenue  instinct  with  the 
image  of  the  just  man’s  life, — “ Erit  tanquam  lignum  quod 
plantatum  est  secus  decursus  aquarum.” 

But  the  Venice  of  Picardy  owed  her  name,  not  to  the 
beauty  of  her  streams  merely,  but  to  their  burden.  She  was 
a worker,  like  the  Adriatic  princess,  in  gold  and  glass,  in 
stone,  wood,  and  ivory  ; she  was  skilled  like  an  Egyptian  in 
the  weaving  of  fine  linen  ; dainty  as  the  maids  of  Judah 
in  divers  colours  of  needlework.  And  of  these,  the  fruits 
of  her  hands,  praising  her  in  her  own  gates,  she  sent  also 
portions  to  stranger  nations,  and  her  fame  went  out  into  all 
lands. 

“ Un  reglement  de  l’echevinage,  du  12rae  avril  1566,  fait 
voir  qu’on  fabriquait  a cette  epoque,  des  velours  de  toutes 
couleurs  pour  meubles,  des  colombettes  a grands  et  petits 
carreaux,  des  burailles  croises,  qu’on  exp^diait  en  Allemagne 
— en  Espagne,  en  Turquie,  et  en  Barbarie  ! ” * 

All-coloured  velvets,  pearl-iridescent  colombettes ! (I  won- 
der what  they  may  be  ?)  and  sent  to  vie  with  the  variegated 
carpet  of  the  Turk,  and  glow  upon  the  arabesque  towers  of 
Barbary ! f Was  not  this  a phase  of  provincial  Picard  life 
which  an  intelligent  English  traveller  might  do  well  to  inquire 
into  ? Why  should  this  fountain  of  rainbows  leap  up  suddenly 
here  by  Somme  ; and  a little  Frankish  maid  write  herself 
the  sister  of  Venice,  and  the  servant  of  Carthage  and  of 
Tyre  ? 

And  if  she,  why  not  others  also  of  our  northern  villages  ? 
Has  the  intelligent  traveller  discerned  anything,  in  the  coun- 
try, or  in  its  shores,  on  his  way  from  the  gate  of  Calais  to  the 
gave  of  Amiens,  of  special  advantage  for  artistic  design,  or  for 
commercial  enterprise?  He  has  seen  league  after  league  of 
sandy  dunes.  We  also,  we,  have  our  sands  by  Severn,  by 
Lune,  by  Solway.  He  has  seen  extensive  plains  of  useful  and 
not  unfragrant  peat, — an  article  sufficiently  accessible  also  to 

* M.  H.  Dusevel,  Histoire  de  la  Ville  d’ Amiens.  Amiens,  Caron  et 
Lambert,  1848  ; p.  805. 

f Carpaccio  trusts  for  the  chief  splendour  of  any  festa  in  cities  to  the 
patterns  of  the  draperies  hung  out  of  windows. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


281 


our  Scotch  and  Irish  industries.  He  has  seen  many  a broad 
down  and  jutting  cliff  of  purest  chalk  ; but,  opposite,  the  per- 
fide  Albion  gleams  no  whit  less  blanche  beyond  the  blue. 
Pure  waters  he  has  seen,  issuing  out  of  the  snowy  rock ; but 
are  ours  less  bright  at  Croydon,  at  Guilford,  or  at  Winchester  ? 
And  yet  one  never  heard  of  treasures  sent  from  Solway  sands 
to  African  ; nor  that  the  builders  at  Romsey  could  give  lessons 
in  colour  to  the  builders  at  Granada  ? What  can  it  be,  in  the 
air  or  the  earth — in  her  stars  or  in  her  sunlight — that  fires  the 
heart  and  quickens  the  eyes  of  the  little  white-capped  Amien- 
oise  soubrette,  till  she  can  match  herself  against  Penelope  ? 

The  intelligent  English  traveller  has  of  course  no  time  to 
waste  on  any  of  these  questions.  But  if  he  has  bought  his 
ham-sandwich,  and  he  is  ready  for  the  “En  voiture,  mes- 
sieurs,” he  may  perhaps  condescend  for  an  instant  to  hear 
what  a lounger  about  the  place,  neither  wasteful  of  his  time, 
nor  sparing  of  it,  can  suggest  as  worth  looking  at,  when  his 
train  glides  out  of  the  station. 

He  will  see  first,  and  doubtless  with  the  respectful  admira- 
tion which  an  Englishman  is  bound  to  bestow  upon  such  ob- 
jects, the  coal-sheds  and  carriage- sheds  of  the  station  itself; 
extending  in  their  ashy  and  oily  splendours  for  about  a quarter 
of  a mile  out  of  the  town  ; and  then,  just  as  the  train  gets 
into  speed,  under  a large  chimney  tower,  which  he  cannot  see 
to  nearly  the  top  of,  but  will  feel  overcast  by  the  shadow  of 
its  smoke,  he  may  see,  if  he  will  trust  his  intelligent  head  out 
of  the  window,  and  look  back,  fifty  or  fifty-one  (I  am  not  sure 
of  my  count  to  a unit)  similar  chimneys,  all  similarly  smoking, 
all  with  similar  works  attached,  oblongs  of  brown  brick  wail, 
with  portholes  numberless  of  black  square  window.  But  in 
the  midst  of  these  fifty  tall  things  that  smoke,  he  will  see  one, 
a little  taller  than  any,  and  more  delicate,  that  does  not 
smoke  ; and  in  the  midst  of  these  fifty  masses  of  blank  wall, 
enclosing  ‘ works  ’ — and  doubtless  producing  works  profitable 
and  honourable  to  France  and  the  world — he  will  see  one  mass 
of  wall — not  blank,  but  strangely  wrought  by  the  hands  of 
foolish  men  of  long  ago,  for  the  purpose  of  enclosing  or  pro- 
ducing no  manner  of  profitable  w7ork  whatsoever,  but  one  — 


282 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  TO” 


“ This  is  the  work  of  God  ; that  ye  should  believe  on  Him 
whom  He  hath  sent ! ” 

Leaving  the  intelligent  traveller  now  to  fulfil  his  vow  of 
pilgrimage  to  Paris, — or  wherever  else  God  may  be  sending 
him, — I will  suppose  that  an  intelligent  Eton  boy  or  two,  or 
thoughtful  English  girl,  may  care  quietly  to  walk  with  me  as 
far  as  this  same  spot  of  commanding  view,  and  to  consider 
what  the  workless — shall  we  also  say  worthless  ? — building, 
and  its  unshadowed  minaret,  may  perhaps  farther  mean. 

Minaret  I have  called  it,  for  want  of  better  English  word. 
Fleche — arrow — is  its  proper  name  ; vanishing  into  the  air 
you  know  not  where,  by  the  mere  fineness  of  it.  Flameless — 
motionless — hurtless — the  fine  arrow  ; unplumed,  unpoisoned 
and  unbarbed  ; aimless — shall  we  say  also,  readers  young  and 
old,  travelling  or  abiding  ? It,  and  the  walls  it  rises  from — 
what  have  they  once  meant  ? What  meaning  have  they  left 
in  them  yet,  for  you,  or  for  the  people  that  live  round  them, 
and  never  look  up  as  they  pass  by  ? 

Suppose  we  set  ourselves  first  to  learn  how  they  came  there. 

At  the  birth  of  Christ,  all  this  hillside,  and  the  brightly- 
watered  plain  below,  with  the  corn-yellow  champaign  above, 
were  inhabited  by  a Druid-taught  race,  wild  enough  in 
thoughts  and  ways,  but  under  Roman  government,  and  grad- 
ually becoming  accustomed  to  hear  the  names,  and  partly  to 
confess  the  power,  of  Roman  gods.  For  three  hundred  years 
after  the  birth  of  Christ  they  heard  the  name  of  no  other 
God. 

Three  hundred  years  ! and  neither  apostles  nor  inheritors  of 
apostleship  had  yet  gone  into  all  the  world  and  preached  the 
gospel  to  every  creature.  Here,  on  their  peaty  ground,  the 
wild  people,  still  trusting  in  Pomona  for  apples,  in  Silvanus 
for  acorns,  in  Ceres  for  bread,  and  in  Proserpina  for  rest, 
hoped  but  the  season’s  blessing  from  the  Gods  of  Harvest, 
and  feared  no  eternal  anger  from  the  Queen  of  Death. 

But  at  last,  three  hundred  years  being  past  and  gone,  in 
the  year  of  Christ  301,  there  came  to  this  hillside  of  Amiens, 
on  the  sixth  day  of  the  Ides  of  October,  the  Messenger  of  a 
new  Life. 


THE  BIBLE  GF  AMIENS. 


283 


His  name,  Firminius  (I  suppose)  in  Latin,  Firmin  in  French, 

- — so  to  be  remembered  here  in  Picardy.  Firmin,  not  Fir- 
minius  ; as  Denis,  not  Dionysius  ; coming  out  of  space — no  one 
tells  what  part  of  space.  But  received  by  the  pagan  Amienois 
with  surprised  welcome,  and  seen  of  them — Forty  days — 
many  days,  we  may  read — preaching  acceptably,  and  binding 
with  baptismal  vows  even  persons  in  good  society  : and  that 
in  such  numbers,  that  at  last  he  is  accused  to  the  Roman  gov- 
ernor, by  the  priests  of  Jupiter  and  Mercury,  as  one  turning 
the  world  upside-down.  And  in  the  last  day  of  the  Forty — 
or  of  the  indefinite  many  meant  by  Forty — he  is  beheaded,  as 
martyrs  ought  to  be,  and  his  ministrations  in  a mortal  body 
ended. 

The  old,  old  story,  you  say  ? Be  it  so  ; you  will  the  more 
easily  remember  it.  The  Amienois  remembered  it  so  care- 
fully, that,  twelve  hundred  years  afterwards,  in  the  sixteenth 
century,  they  thought  good  to  carve  and  paint  the  four  stone 
pictures,  Nos.  1,  2,  3,  and  4 of  our  first  photograph,  (see  pref- 
atory references).  Scene  1st,  St.  Firmin  arriving  ; scene  2nd, 
St.  Firmin  preaching  ; scene  3rd,  St.  Firmin  baptizing  ; and 
scene  4th,  St.  Firmin  beheaded,  by  an  executioner  with  very 
red  legs,  and  an  attendant  dog  of  the  character  of  the  dog  in 
4 Faust,’  of  whom  we  may  have  more  to  say  presently. 

Following  in  the  meantime  the  tale  of  St.  Firmin,  as  of  old 
time  known,  his  body  was  received,  and  buried,  by  a Roman 
senator,  his  disciple,  (a  kind  of  Joseph  of  Arimathea  to  St. 
Firmin,)  in  the  Roman  senator’s  own  garden.  Who  also 
built  a little  oratory  over  his  grave.  The  Roman  senator’s 
son  built  a church  to  replace  the  oratory,  dedicated  it  to  Our 
Lady  of  Martyrs,  and  established  it  as  an  episcopal  seat — the 
first  of  the  French  nation’s.  A very  notable  spot  for  the 
French  nation,  surely?  One  deserving,  perhaps,  some  little 
memory  or  monument, — cross,  tablet,  or  the  like?  Where, 
therefore,  do  you  suppose  this  first  cathedral  of  French  Chris- 
tianity stood,  and  with  what  monument  has  it  been  honoured  ? 

It  stood  where  we  now  stand,  companion  mine,  whoever  you 
may  be  ; and  the  monument  wherewith  it  has  been  honoured 
is  this — chimney,  whose  gonfalon  of  smoke  overshadows  us— 


284 


“OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US.'1 


the  latest  effort  of  modern  art  in  Amiens,  the  chimney  of  St 
Acheul. 

The  first  cathedral,  you  observe,  of  the  French  nation  ; more 
accurately,  the  first  germ  of  cathedral  for  the  French  nation — 
who  are  not  yet  here  ; only  this  grave  of  a martyr  is  here,  and 
this  church  of  Our  Lady  of  Martyrs,  abiding  on  the  hillside, 
till  the  Eoman  power  pass  away. 

Failing  together  with  it,  and  trampled  down  by  savage 
tribes,  alike  the  city  and  the  shrine ; the  grave  forgotten, — when 
at  last  the  Franks  themselves  pour  from  the  north,  and  the 
utmost  wave  of  them,  lapping  along  these  downs  of  Somme, 
is  here  stayed,  and  the  Frankish  standard  planted,  and  the 
French  kingdom  throned. 

Here  their  first  capital,  here  the  first  footsteps  * of  the 
Frank  in  his  France  ! Think  of  it.  All  over  the  south  are 
Gauls,  Burgundians,  Bretons,  heavier-hearted  nations  of  sullen 
mind  : — at  their  utmost  brim  and  border,  here  at  last  are  the 
Franks,  the  source  of  all  Franchise,  for  this  our  Europe.  You 
have  heard  the  word  in  England,  before  now,  but  English 
word  for  it  is  none  ! Honesty  we  have  of  our  own  : but 
Frankness  we  must  learn  of  these  : nay,  all  the  western  na- 
tions of  us  are  in  a few  centuries  more  to  be  known  by  this 
name  of  Frank.  Franks,  of  Paris  that  is  to  be,  in  time  to 
come  ; but  French  of  Paris  is  in  year  of  grace  500  an  unknown 
tongue  in  Paris,  as  much  as  in  Stratford-att-ye-Bowe.  French 
of  Amiens  is  the  kingly  and  courtly  form  of  Christian  speech, 
Paris  lying  yet  in  Lutetian  clay,  to  develop  into  tile-field, 
perhaps,  in  due  time.  Here,  by  soft-glittering  Somme,  reign 
Clovis  and  his  Clotilde. 

And  by  St.  Firmin’s  grave  speaks  now  another  gentle  evan- 
gelist, and  the  first  Frank  king’s  prayer  to  the  King  of  kings 
is  made  to  Him,  known  only  as  “ the  God  of  Clotilde.” 

I must  ask  the  reader’s  patience  now  with  a date  or  two. 
and  stern  facts — two — three — or  more. 

Clodion,  the  leader  of  the  first  Franks  who  reach  irrevocably 

* The  first  fixed  and  set-down  footsteps  ; wandering  tribes  called  o£ 
Franks,  had  overswept  the  country,  and  recoiled,  again  and  again. 
But  this  invasion  of  the  so-called  Salian  Franks,  never  retreats  again. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


285 


beyond  the  Rhine,  fights  his  way  through  desultory  Roman 
cohorts  as  far  as  Amiens,  and  takes  it,  in  445.* 

Two  years  afterwards,  at  his  death,  the  scarcely  asserted 
throne  is  seized — perhaps  inevitably — by  the  tutor  of  his 
children,  Merovee,  whose  dynasty  is  founded  on  the  defeat  of 
Attila  at  Chalons. 

He  died  in  457.  His  Son  Childeric,  giving  himself  up  to 
the  love  of  women,  and  scorned  by  the  Frank  soldiery,  is 
driven  into  exile,  the  Franks  choosing  rather  to  live  under  the 
law  of  Rome  than  under  a base  chief  of  their  own.  He  re- 
ceives asylum  at  the  court  of  the  king  of  Thuringia,  and 
abides  there.  His  chief  officer  in  Amiens,  at  his  departure, 
breaks  a ring  in  two,  and,  giving  him  the  half  of  it,  tells  him, 
when  the  other  half  is  sent,  to  return. 

And,  after  many  days,  the  half  of  the  broken  ring  is  sent, 
and  he  returns,  and  is  accepted  king  by  his  Franks. 

The  Thuringian  queen  follows  him,  (I  cannot  find  if  her 
husband  is  first  dead — still  less,  if  dead,  how  dying,)  and  of- 
fers herself  to  him  for  his  wife. 

“I  have  known  thy  usefulness,  and  that  thou  art  very 
strong  ; and  I have  come  to  live  with  thee.  Had  I known,  in 
parts  beyond  sea,  any  one  more  useful  than  thou,  I should 
have  sought  to  live  with  him.” 

He  took  her  for  his  wife,  and  their  son  is  Clovis. 

A wonderful  story  ; how  far  in  literalness  true  is  of  no  man- 
ner of  moment  to  us  ; the  myth,  and  power  of  it,  do  manifest 
the  nature  of  the  French  kingdom,  and  prophesy  its  future 
destiny.  Personal  valour,  personal  beauty,  loyalty  to  kings, 
love  of  women,  disdain  of  unloving  marriage,  note  all  these 
things  for  true,  and  that  in  the  corruption  of  these  will  be 
the  last  death  of  the  Frank,  as  in  their  force  was  his  first 
glory. 

Personal  valour,  worth.  Utilitas , the  keystone  of  all.  Birth 
nothing,  except  as  gifting  with  valour  ; — Law  of  primogeniture 
unknown  ; — Propriety  of  conduct,  it  appears,  for  the  present, 
also  nowhere  ! (but  we  are  all  pagans  yet,  remember). 

* See  note  at  end  of  chapter,  as  also  for  the  allusions  in  p.  14,  to  the 
battle  of  Soissons. 


286 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HA  VE  TOLD  US." 


Let  us  get  our  dates  and  our  geography,  at  any  rate,  gath- 
ered out  of  the  great  ‘ nowhere  ’ of  confused  memory,  and  set 
well  together,  thus  far. 

457.  Merovee  dies.  The  useful  Childeric,  counting  his 
exile,  and  reign  in  Amiens,  together,  is  King  altogether 
twenty-four  years,  457  to  481,  and  during  his  reign  Odoacer 
ends  the  Roman  empire  in  Italy,  476. 

481.  Clovis  is  only  fifteen  when  he  succeeds  his  father,  as 
King  of  the  Franks  in  Amiens.  At  this  time  a fragment  of 
Roman  power  remains  isolated  in  central  France,  while  four 
strong  and  partly  savage  nations  form  a cross  round  this  dying 
centre  : the  Frank  on  the  north,  the  Breton  on  the  west,  the 
Burgundian  on  the  east,  the  Visigoth  strongest  of  all  and  gen- 
tlest, in  the  south,  from  Loire  to  the  sea. 

Sketch  for  yourself,  first,  a map  of  France,  as  large  as  you 
like,  as  in  Plate  L,  fig.  1,  marking  only  the  courses  of  the  five 
rivers,  Somme,  Seine,  Loire,  Saone,  Rhone  ; then,  rudely,  you 
find  it  was  divided  at  the  time  thus,  fig.  2 : Fleur-de-lysee 
part,  Frank  ; Breton  ; ///  Burgundian  ; —— Visi- 

goth. I am  not  sure  how  far  these  last  reached  across  Rhone 
into  Provence,  but  I think  best  to  indicate  Provence  as  semee 
with  roses. 

Now,  under  Clovis,  the  Franks  fight  three  great  battles. 
The  first,  with  the  Romans,  near  Soissons,  which  they  win- 
and  become  masters  of  France  as  far  as  the  Loire.  Copy  the 
rough  map  fig.  2,  and  put  the  fieur-de-iys  all  over  the  middle 
of  it,  extinguishing  the  Romans  (fig.  3).  This  battle  was  won 
by  Clovis,  I believe,  before  he  married  Clo tilde.  He  wins  his 
princess  by  it : cannot  get  his  pretty  vase,  however,  to  present 
to  her.  Keep  that  story  well  in  your  mind,  and  the  battle  of 
Soissons,  as  winning  mid-France  for  the  French,  and  ending 
the  Romans  there  for  ever.  Secondly,  after  he  marries  Clo- 
tilde,  the  wild  Germans  attack  him  from  the  north,  and  he  has 
to  fight  for  life  and  throne  at  Tolbiac.  This  is  the  battle  in 
which  he  prays  to  the  God  of  Clotilde,  and  quits  himself  of 
the  Germans  by  His  help.  Whereupon  he  is  crowned  in 
Rheiras  by  St.  Remy. 

And  now,  in  the  new  strength  of  his  Christianity  and  his 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


287 


twin  victory  over  Rome  and  Germany,  and  his  love  for  his 
queen,  and  his  ambition  for  his  people,  he  looks  south  on  that 
vast  Yisigothic  power,  between  Loire  and  the  snowy  mount- 
ains. Shall  Christ,  and  the  Franks,  not  be  stronger  than 
villainous  Visigoths  ‘ who  are  Arians  also  ’ ? All  his  Franks 
are  with  him,  in  that  opinion.  So  he  marches  against  the 
Visigoths,  meets  them  and  their  Alarie  at  Poitiers,  ends  their 
Alaric  and  their  Arianism,  and  carries  his  faithful  Franks  to 
the  Pic  du  Midi. 

And  so  now  you  must  draw  the  map  of  France  once  more, 
and  put  the  fleur-de-lys  all  over  its  central  mass  from  Calais 
to  the  Pyrenees  : only  Brittany  still  on  the  west,  Burgundy  in 
the  east,  and  the  white  Provence  rose  beyond  Rhone.  And 
now  poor  little  Amiens  has  become  a mere  border  town  like 
our  Durham,  and  Somme  a border  streamlet  like  our  Tyne. 
Loire  and  Seine  have  become  the  great  French  rivers,  and 
men  will  be  minded  to  build  cities  by  these  ; where  the  well- 
watered  plains,  not  of  peat,  but  richest  pasture,  may  repose 
under  the  guard  of  saucy  castles  on  the  crags  and  moated 
towers  on  the  islands.  But  now  let  us  think  a little  more 
closely  wdiat  our  changed  symbols  in  the  map  may  mean— five 
fleur-de-lys  for  level  bar. 

They  don’t  mean,  certainly  that  all  the  Goths  are  gone,  and 
nobody  but  Franks  in  France  ? The  Franks  have  not  massa- 
cred Yisigothic  man,  woman,  and  child,  from  Loire  to  Garonne. 
Nay,  where  their  own  throne  is  still  set  by  the  Somme,  the 
peat-bred  people  whom  they  found  there,  live  there  still, 
though  subdued.  Frank,  or  Goth,  or  Roman  may  fluctuate 
hither  and  thither,  in  chasing  or  flying  troops  : but,  unchanged 
through  all  the  gusts  of  war,  the  rural  people  whose  huts 
they  pillage,  whose  farms  they  ravage,  and  over  whose  arts 
they  reign,  must  still  be  diligently,  silently,  and  with  no  time 
for  lamentation,  ploughing,  sowing,  cattle-breeding  ! 

Else  how  could  Frank  or  Hun,  Visigoth  or  Roman,  live  for 
a month,  or  fight  for  a day  ? 

Whatever  the  name,  or  the  manners,  of  their  masters,  the 
ground  delvers  must  be  the  same  ; and  the  goatherd  of  the 
Pyrenees,  and  the  vine-dresser  of  Garonne,  and  the  milkmaid 


28S 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  USA 


of  Picardy,  give  them  what  lords  you  may,  abide  in  their  land 
always,  blossoming  as  the  trees  of  the  field,  and  enduring  as 
the  crags  of  the  desert.  And  these,  the  warp  and  first  sub- 
stance of  the  nation,  are  divided,  not  by  dynasties,  but  by 
climates  ; and  are  strong  here,  and  helpless  there,  by  privi- 
leges which  no  invading  tyrants  can  abolish,  and  through  faults 
which  no  preaching  hermit  can  repress.  Now,  therefore, 
please  let  us  leave  our  history  a minute  or  two,  and  read  the 
lessons  of  constant  earth  and  sky. 

In  old  times,  when  one  posted  from  Calais  to  Paris,  there 
was  about  half  an  hour’s  trot  on  the  level,  from  the  gate  of 
Calais  to  the  long  chalk  hill,  which  had  to  be  climbed  before 
arriving  at  the  first  post-house  in  the  village  of  Marquise. 

That  chalk  rise,  virtually,  is  the  front  of  France  ; that  last  bit 
of  level  north  of  it,  virtually  the  last  of  Flanders  ; south  of  it, 
stretches  now  a district  of  chalk  and  fine  building  limestone, — 
(if  you  keep  your  eyes  open,  you  may  see  a great  quarry  of  it  on 
the  west  of  the  railway,  half-way  between  Calais  and  Boulogne, 
where  once  was  a blessed  little  craggy  dingle  opening  into  velvet 
lawns  ;) — this  high,  but  never  mountainous,  calcareous  tract, 
sweeping  round  the  chalk  basin  of  Paris  away  to  Caen  on  one 
side,  and  Nancy  on  the  other,  and  south  as  far  as  Bourges,  and 
the  Limousin.  This  limestone  tract,  with  its  keen  fresh  air, 
everywhere  arable  surface,  and  everywhere  quarriable  banks 
above  well-watered  meadow,  is  the  real  country  of  the  French. 
Here  only  are  their  arts  clearly  developed.  Farther  south  they 
are  Gascons,  or  Limousins,  or  Auvergnats,  or  the  like.  West- 
ward, grim-granitic  Bretons ; eastward,  Alpine-bearish  Burgun- 
dians : here  only,  on  the  chalk  and  finely-knit  marble,  between, 
say,  Amiens  and  Chartres  one  way,  and  between  Caen  and 
Rheims  on  the  other,  have  you  real  France . 

Of  which,  before  wre  carry  on  the  farther  vital  history,  I 
must  ask  the  reader  to  consider  with  me,  a little,  how  history, 
so  called,  has  been  for  the  most  part  written,  and  of  what 
particulars  it  usually  consists. 

Suppose  that  the  tale  of  King  Lear  were  a true  one  ; and 
that  a modern  historian  were  giving  the  abstract  of  it  in  a 
school  manual,  purporting  to  contain  all  essential  facts  in 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


289 


British  history  valuable  to  British  youth  in  competitive  exam- 
ination. The  story  would  be  related  somewhat  after  this 
manner  : — 

“The  reign  of  the  last  king  of  the  seventy-ninth  dynasty 
closed  in  a series  of  events  with  the  record  of  which  it  is  pain- 
ful to  pollute  the  pages  of  history.  The  weak  old  man  wished 
to  divide  his  kingdom  into  dowries  for  his  three  daughters  ; 
but  on  proposing  this  arrangement  to  them,  finding  it  re- 
ceived by  the  youngest  with  coldness  and  reserve,  he  drove 
her  from  his  court,  and  divided  the  kingdom  between  his  two 
elder  children. 

“ The  youngest  found  refuge  at  the  court  of  France,  where 
ultimately  the  prince  royal  married  her.  But  the  two  elder 
daughters,  having  obtained  absolute  power,  treated  their  father 
at  first  with  disrespect,  and  soon  with  contumely.  Refused 
at  last  even  the  comforts  necessary  to  his  declining  years,  the 
old  king,  in  a transport  of  rage,  left  the  palace,  with,  it  is 
said,  only  the  court  fool  for  an  attendant,  and  wandered,  fran- 
tic and  half  naked,  during  the  storms  of  winter,  in  the  woods 
of  Britain. 

“ Hearing  of  these  events,  his  youngest  daughter  hastily 
collected  an  army,  and  invaded  the  territory  of  her  ungrateful 
sisters,  with  the  object  of  restoring  her  father  to  his  throne  : 
but,  being  met  by  a well  disciplined  force,  under  the  com- 
mand of  her  eldest  sister’s  paramour,  Edmund,  bastard  son  of 
the  Earl  of  Gloucester,  was  herself  defeated,  thrown  into 
prison,  and  soon  afterwards  strangled  by  the  adulterer’s  or- 
der. The  old  king  expired  on  receiving  the  news  of  her 
death  ; and  the  participators  in  these  crimes  soon  after  re- 
ceived their  reward  ; for  the  two  wicked  queens  being  rivals 
for  the  affections  of  the  bastard,  the  one  of  them  who  was  re- 
garded by  him  with  less  favour  poisoned  the  other,  and  after- 
wards killed  herself.  Edmund  afterwards  met  his  death  at 
the  hand  of  his  brother,  the  legitimate  son  of  Gloucester, 
under  whose  rule,  with  that  of  the  Earl  of  Kent,  the  kingdom 
remained  for  several  succeeding  years.” 

Imagine  this  succinctly  graceful  recital  of  what  the  histo- 
rian conceived  to  be  the  facts,  adorned  with  violently  black 


290 


“OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  VST 


and  white  woodcuts,  representing  the  blinding  of  Gloucester^ 
the  phrenzy  of  Lear,  the  strangling  of  Cordelia,  and  the  suicide 
of  Goneril,  and  you  have  a type  of  popular  history  in  the  nine- 
teenth century  ; which  is,  you  inay  perceive  after  a little  re- 
flection, about  as  profitable  reading  for  a young  person  (so  far 
as  regards  the  general  colour  and  purity  of  their  thoughts)  as 
the  Newgate  Calendar  would  be  ; with  this  farther  condition 
of  incalculably  greater  evil,  that,  while  the  calendar  of  prison- 
dime  would  teach  a thoughtful  youth  the  dangers  of  low  life 
and  evil  company,  the  calendar  of  kingly  crime  overthrows 
his  respect  for  any  manner  of  government,  and  his  faith  in  the 
ordinances  of  Providence  itself. 

Books  of  loftier  pretence,  written  by  bankers,  members  of 
Parliament,  or  orthodox  clergymen,  are  of  course  not  'want- 
ing ; and  show  that  the  progress  of  civilization  consists  in  the 
victory  of  usury  over  ecclesiastical  prejudice,  or  in  the  estab- 
lishment of  the  Parliamentary  privileges  of  the  borough  of 
Puddlecorabe,  or  in  the  extinction  of  the  benighted  supersti- 
tions of  the  Papacy  by  the  glorious  light  of  Reformation, 
Finally,  you  have  the  broadly  philosophical  history,  which 
proves  to  you  that  there  is  no  evidence  whatever  of  any  over- 
ruling Providence  in  human  affairs ; that  all  virtuous  actions 
have  selfish  motives  ; and  that  a scientific  selfishness,  wfith 
proper  telegraphic  communications,  and  perfect  knowledge  of 
all  the  species  of  Bacteria,  will  entirely  secure  the  future  well 
being  of  the  upper  classes  of  society,  and  the  dutiful  resigna- 
tion of  those  beneath  them. 

Meantime,  the  two  ignored  pow-ers — the  Providence  of 
Heaven,  and  the  virtue  of  men — have  ruled,  and  rule,  the 
world,  not  invisibly  ; and  they  are  the  only  powders  of  which 
history  has  ever  to  tell  any  profitable  truth.  Under  all  sor- 
rows there  is  the  force  of  virtue  ; over  all  ruin,  the  restoring 
charity  of  God.  To  these  alone  wre  have  to  look ; in  these 
alone  we  may  understand  the  past,  and  predict  the  future, 
destiny  of  the  ages. 

I return  to  the  story  of  Clovis,  king  now  of  all  central 
France.  Fix  the  year  500  in  your  minds  as  the  approximate 
date  of  his  baptism  at  Pdieims,  and  of  St.  Remy’s  sermon  to 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


291 


him,  telling  him  of  the  sufferings  and  passion  of  Christ,  till 
Clovis  sprang  from  his  throne,  grasping  his  spear,  and  crying, 
“ Had  I been  there  with  my  brave  Franks,  I would  have 
avenged  His  wrongs.” 

“There  is  little  doubt,”  proceeds  the  cockney  historian, 
“ that  the  conversion  of  Clovis  was  as  much  a matter  of  policy 
as  of  faith,”  But  the  cockney  historian  had  better  limit  his 
remarks  on  the  characters  and  faiths  of  men  to  those  of  the 
curates  who  have  recently  taken  orders  in  his  fashionable 
neighbourhood,  or  the  bishops  who  have  lately  preached  to 
the  population  of  its  manufacturing  suburbs.  Frankish  kings 
were  made  of  other  clay. 

The  Christianity  of  Clovis  does  not  indeed  produce  any 
fruits  of  the  kind  usually  looked  for  in  a modern  convert  We 
do  not  hear  of  his  repenting  ever  so  little  of  any  of  his  sins, 
nor  resolving  to  lead  a new  life  in  any  the  smallest  particular. 
He  had  not  been  impressed  with  convictions  of  sin  at  the  bat- 
tle of  Tolbiac  ; nor,  in  asking  for  the  help  of  the  God  of  Clo- 
tilde,  had  he  felt  or  professed  the  remotest  intention  of  chang- 
ing his  character,  or  abandoning  his  projects.  What  he  was, 
before  he  believed  in  his  queen’s  God,  he  only  more  intensely 
afterwards  became,  in  the  confidence  of  that  before  unknown 
God’s  supernatural  help.  His  natural  gratitute  to  the  Deliv- 
ering Power,  and  pride  in  its  protection,  added  only  fierceness 
to  his  soldiership,  and  deepened  his  political  enmities  with  the 
rancour  of  religious  indignation.  No  more  dangerous  snare 
is  set  by  the  fiends  for  human  frailty  than  the  belief  that  our 
own  enemies  are  also  the  enemies  of  God  ; and  it  is  perfectly 
conceivable  to  me  that  the  conduct  of  Clovis  might  have  been 
the  more  unscrupulous,  precisely  in  the  measure  that  his  faith 
was  more  sincere. 

Had  either  Clovis  or  Clotilde  fully  understood  the  precepts 
of  their  Master,  the  following  history  of  France,  and  of  Eu- 
rope, would  have  been  other  than  it  is.  What  they  could  un- 
derstand, or  in  any  wise  were  taught,  you  will  find  that  they 
obeyed,  and  were  blessed  in  obeying.  But  their  histor}^  is 
complicated  with  that  of  several  other  persons,  respecting 
whom  we  must  note  now  a few  too  much  forgotten  particulars. 


292 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLU  US l” 


If  from  beneath  the  apse  of  Amiens  Cathedral  we  take  the 
street  leading  due  south,  leaving  the  railroad  station  on  the 
left,  it  brings  us  to  the  foot  of  a gradually  ascending  hill, 
some  half  a mile  long — a pleasant  and  quiet  walk  enough,  ter- 
minating on  the  level  of  the  highest  land  near  Amiens ; 
whence,  looking  back,  the  Cathedral  is  seen  beneath  us,  all 
but  the  fleche,  our  gained  hill-top  being  on  a level  with  its 
roof-ridge  : and,  to  the  south,  the  plain  of  France. 

Somewhere  about  this  spot,  or  in  the  line  between  it  and 
St.  Acheul,  stood  the  ancient  Roman  gate  of  the  Twins,  where- 
on were  carved  Romulus  and  Remus  being  suckled  by  the 
wolf  ; and  out  of  which,  one  bitter  winter’s  day,  a hundred 
and  seventy  years  ago  when  Clovis  was  baptized — had  ridden 
a Roman  soldier,  wrapped  in  his  horseman’s  cloak,*  on  the 
causeway  which  was  part  of  the  great  Roman  road  from  Lyons 
to  Boulogne. 

And  it  is  well  worth  your  while  also,  some  frosty  autumn  or 
winter  day  when  the  east  wind  is  high,  to  feel  the  sweep  of  it 
at  this  spot,  remembering  what  chanced  here,  memorable  to 
all  men,  and  serviceable,  in  that  winter  of  the  year  332,  when 
men  were  dying  for  cold  in  Ameins  streets  : — namely,  that  the 
Roman  horseman,  scarce  gone  out  of  the  city  gate,  was  met 
by  a naked  beggar,  shivering  with  cold ; and  that,  seeing  no 
other  way  of  shelter  for  him,  he  drew  his  sword,  divided  his 
own  cloak  in  two,  and  gave  him  half  of  it. 

No  ruinous  gift,  nor  even  enthusiastically  generous  : Syd- 
ney’s cup  of  cold  water  needed  more  self-denial ; and  I am 
well  assured  that  many  a Christian  child  of  our  day,  himself 
well  warmed  and  clad,  meeting  one  naked  and  cold,  would  be 
ready  enough  to  give  the  whole  cloak  off  his  own  shoulders  to 
the  necessitous  one,  if  his  better-advised  nurse,  or  mamma, 
■would  let  him.  But  this  Roman  soldier  was  no  Christian,  and 
did  his  serene  charity  in  simplicity,  yet  with  prudence. 

Nevertheless,  that  same  night,  he  beheld  in  a dream  the 
Lord  Jesus,  who  stood  before  him  in  the  midst  of  angels. 

* More  properly,  his  knight’s  cloak  : in  all  likelihood  the  trabea,  with 
purple  and  white  stripes,  dedicate  to  the  kings  of  Rome,  and  chiefly  to 
Romulus, 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


293 


having  on  his  shoulders  the  half  of  the  cloa,k  he  had  bestowed 
on  the  beggar. 

And  Jesus  said  to  the  angels  that  were  around  him,  “Know 
ye  who  hath  thus  arrayed  me  ? My  servant  Martin,  though 
yet  unbaptized,  has  done  this.”  And  Martin  after  this  vision 
hastened  to  receive  baptism,  being  then  in  his  twenty-third 
year.* 

Whether  these  things  ever  were  so,  or  how  far  so,  credulous 
or  incredulous  reader,  is  no  business  whatever  of  yours  or 
mine.  What  is,  and  shall  be,  everlastingly,  so, — namely,  the 
infallible  truth  of  the  lesson  herein  taught,  and  the  actual  ef- 
fect of  the  life  of  St.  Martin  on  the  mind  of  Christendom, — is, 
very  absolutely,  the  business  of  every  rational  being  in  any 
Christian  realm. 

You  are  to  understand,  then,  first  of  all,  that  the  especial 
character  of  St.  Martin  is  a serene  and  meek  charity  to  all 
creatures.  He  is  not  a preaching  saint — still  less  a persecut- 
ing one  : not  even  an  anxious  one.  Of  his  prayers  we  hear 
little— of  his  wishes,  nothing.  What  he  does  always,  is  merely 
the  right  thing  at  the  right  moment ; — rightness  and  kindness 
being  in  his  mind  one  : an  extremely  exemplary  saint,  to  my 
notion. 

Converted  and  baptized — and  conscious  of  having  seen 
Christ- — he  nevertheless  gives  his  officers  no  trouble  whatever 
— does  not  try  to  make  proselytes  in  his  cohort.  “It  is 
Christ’s  business,  surely  ! — if  He  wants  them,  He  may  appear 
to  them  as  He  has  to  me,”  seems  the  feeling  of  his  first  bap- 
tized days.  He  remains  seventeen  years  in  the  army  on  those 
tranquil  terms. 

At  the  end  of  that  time,  thinking  it  might  be  well  to  take 
other  service,  he  asks  for  his  dismissal  from  the  Emperor 
Julian, — who,  accusing  him  of  faintheartedness,  Martin  offers, 
unarmed,  to  lead  his  cohort  into  battle,  bearing  only  the  sign 
of  the  cross.  Julian  takes  him  at  his  word, — keeps  him  in 
ward  till  time  of  battle  comes  ; but,  the  day  before  he  counts 
on  putting  him  to  that  war  ordeal,  the  barbarian  enemy  sends 
embassy  with  irrefusable  offers  of  submission  and  peace. 

* Mrs.  Jameson,  Legendary  Art,  Vol.  II.,  p.  721, 


294 


OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US” 


The  story  is  not  often  dwelt  upon  : how  far  literally  true, 
again  observe,  does  not  in  the  least  matter  ; — here  is  the  les- 
son for  ever  given  of  the  way  in  which  a Christian  soldier 
should  meet  his  enemies.  Which,  had  John  Bunyan’s  Mr. 
Greatheart  understood,  the  Celestial  gates  had  opened  by  this 
time  to  many  a pilgrim  who  has  failed  to  hew  his  path  up  to 
them  with  the  sword  of  sharpness. 

But  true  in  some  practical  and  effectual  way  the  story  is ; 
for  after  a wrhile,  without  any  oratorizing,  anathematizing,  or 
any  manner  of  disturbance,  we  find  the  Roman  Knight  made 
Bishop  of  Tours,  and  becoming  an  influence  of  unmixed  good 
to  all  mankind,  then,  and  afterwards.  And  virtually  the  same 
story  is  repeated  of  his  bishop’s  robe  as  of  his  knight’s  cloak 
— not  to  be  rejected  because  so  probable  an  invention  ; for  it 
is  just  as  probable  an  act. 

Going,  in  his  full  robes,  to  say  prayers  in  church,  with  one 
of  his  deacons,  he  came  across  some  unhappily  robeless  person 
by  the  wayside  ; for  whom  he  forthwith  orders  his  deacon  to 
provide  some  manner  of  coat,  or  gown. 

The  deacon  objecting  that  no  apparel  of  that  profane  nature 
is  under  his  hand,  St.  Martin,  with  his  customary  serenity, 
takes  off  his  own  episcopal  stole,  or  whatsoever  flowing  state- 
liness it  might  be,  throws  it  on  the  destitute  shoulders,  and 
passes  on  to  perform  indecorous  public  service  in  his  waist- 
coat, or  such  mediaeval  nether  attire  as  remained  to  him. 

But,  as  he  stood  at  the  altar,  a globe  of  light  appeared 
above  his  head  ; and  when  he  raised  his  bare  arms  with  the 
Host — the  angels  wTere  seen  round  him,  hanging  golden  chains 
upon  them,  and  jewels,  not  of  the  earth. 

Incredible  to  you  in  the  nature  of  things,  wise  reader,  and 
too  palpably  a gloss  of  monkish  folly  on  the  older  story  ? 

Be  it  so : yet  in  this  fable  of  monkish  folly,  understood 
with  the  heart,  would  have  been  the  chastisement  and  check 
of  every  form  of  the  church’s  pride  and  sensuality,  which  in 
our  day  have  literally  sunk  the  service  of  God  and  His  poor 
into  the  service  of  the  clergyman  and  his  rich  ; and  changed 
what  was  once  the  garment  of  praise  for  the  spirit  of  heaviness, 
into  the  spangling  of  Pantaloons  in  an  ecclesiastical  Masquerade. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AM1ENF 


295 


But  one  more  legend, — and  we  liave  enough  to  show  us  the 
roots  of  this  saint’s  strange  and  universal  power  over  Chris- 
tendom. 

“ What  peculiarly  distinguished  St.  Martin  was  his  sweet, 
serious,  unfailing  serenity ; no  one  had  ever  seen  him  angry, 
or  sad,  or  gay  ; there  was  nothing  in  his  heart  but  piety  to 
God  and  pity  for  men.  The  Devil,  who  was  particularly  envi- 
ous of  his  virtues,  detested  above  all  his  exceeding  charity, 
because  it  was  the  most  inimical  to  his  own  power,  and  one  day 
reproached  him  mockingly  that  he  so  soon  received  into  fa- 
vour the  fallen  and  the  repentant.  But  St.  Martin  answered 
him  sorrowfully,  saying,  ‘ Oh  most  miserable  that  thou  art  I 
if  thou  also  couldst  cease  to  persecute  and  seduce  wretched 
men,  if  thou  also  couldst  repent,  thou  also  shouldst  find  mercy 
and  forgiveness  through  Jesus  Christ.’  ” * 

In  this  gentleness  was  his  strength  ; and  the  issue  of  it  is 
best  to  be  estimated  by  comparing  its  scope  with  that  of  the 
work  of  St.  Firmin.  The  impatient  missionary  riots  and  rants 
about  Amiens’  streets — insults,  exhorts,  persuades,  baptizes, 
— turns  everything,  as  aforesaid,  upside  down  for  forty  days  • 
then  gets  his  head  cut  off,  and  is  never  more  named,  out  of 
Amiens.  St.  Martin  teases  nobody,  spends  not  a breath  in 
unpleasant  exhortation,  understands,  by  Christ’s  first  lesson 
to  himself,  that  undipped  people  may  be  as  good  as  dipped  if 
their  hearts  are  clean  ; helps,  forgives,  and  cheers,  (compan- 
ionable even  to  the  loving-cup,)  as  readily  the  clown  as  the 
king  ; he  is  the  patron  of  honest  drinking ; the  stuffing  of  your 
Martinmas  goose  is  fragrant  in  his  nostrils,  and  sacred  to  him 
the  last  kindly  rays  of  departing  summer.  And  somehow — 
the  idols  totter  before  him  far  and  near — the  Pagan  gods 
fade,  his  Christ  becomes  all  men’s  Christ — his  name  is  named 
over  new  shrines  innumerable  in  all  lands  ; high  on  the  Boman 
hills,  lowly  in  English  fields; — St.  Augustine  baptized  his 
first  English  converts  in  St.  Martin’s  church  at  Canterbury  ; 
and  the  Charing  Cross  station  itself  has  not  yet  effaced  wholly 
from  London  minds  his  memory  or  his  name. 

That  story  of  the  Episcopal  Robe  is  the  last  of  St.  Martin  re- 
* Mrs.  Jameson,  Yol.  II.,  p.  722. 


296 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HA  VE  TOLD  lrS” 


specting  which  I venture  to  tell  you  that  it  is  wiser  to  suppose 
it  literally  true,  than  a mere  myth  ; myth,  however,  of  the  deep- 
est value  and  beauty  it  remains  assuredly  : and  this  really  last 
story  I have  to  tell,  which  I admit  you  will  be  wiser  in  think- 
ing a fable  than  exactly  true,  nevertheless  had  assuredly  at 
its  root  some  grain  of  fact  (sprouting  a hundred-fold)  cast  on 
good  ground  by  a visible  and  unforgetable  piece  of  St.  Martins 
actual  behaviour  in  high  company  ; while,  as  a myth,  it  is 
every  whit  and  for  ever  valuable  and  comprehensive. 

St.  Martin,  then,  as  the  tale  will  have  it,  was  dining  one 
day  at  the  highest  of  tables  in  the  terrestrial  globe — namely, 
with  the  Emperor  and  Empress  of  Germany  ! You  need  not 
inquire  what  Emperor,  or  which  of  the  Emperor’s  wives ! 
The  Emperor  of  Germany  is,  in  all  early  myths,  the  expression 
for  the  highest  sacred  power  of  the  State,  as  the  Pope  is  the 
highest  sacred  power  of  the  Church.  St.  Martin  was  dining 
then,  as  aforesaid,  with  the  Emperor,  of  course  sitting  next 
him  on  his  left — Empress  opposite  on  his  right : everything 
orthodox.  St.  Martin  much  enjoying  his  dinner,  and  making 
himself  generally  agreeable  to  the  company  : not  in  the  least 
a John  Baptist  sort  of  a saint.  You  are  aware  also  that  in 
Royal  feasts  in  those  days  persons  of  much  inferior  rank  in 
society  were  allowed  in  the  hall : got  behind  people’s  chairs, 
and  saw  and  heard  what  was  going  on,  while  they  unobtru- 
sively picked  up  crumbs,  and  licked  trenchers. 

When  the  dinner  was  a little  forward,  and  time  for  wine 
came,  the  Emperor  fills  his  own  cup — fills  the  Empress’s — 
fills  St.  Martin’s, — affectionately  hobnobs  with  St.  Martin. 
The  equally  loving,  and  yet  more  truly  believing,  Empress, 
looks  across  the  table,  humbly,  but  also  royally,  expecting  St. 
Martin,  of  course,  next  to  hobnob  with  her.  St.  Martin  looks 
round,  first,  deliberately  ; — becomes  aware  of  a tatterdemalion 
and  thirsty-looking  soul  of  a beggar  at  his  chair  side,  who  has 
managed  to  get  his  cup  filled  somehow,  also — by  a charitable 
lacquey. 

St.  Martin  turns  his  back  on  the  Empress,  and  hobnobs 
with  him  ! 

For  which  charity — mythic  if  you  like,  but  evermore  exem- 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


297 


plary— - lie  remains,  as  aforesaid,  the  patron  of  good-Christian 
topers  to  this  hour. 

As  gathering  years  told  upon  him,  he  seems  to  have  felt 
that  he  had  carried  weight  of  crozier  long  enough — that  busy 
Tours  must  now  find  a busier  Bishop — that,  for  himself,  he 
might  innocently  henceforward  take  his  pleasure  and  his  rest 
where  the  vine  grew  and  the  lark  sang.  For  his  episcopal 
palace,  he  takes  a little  cave  in  the  chalk  cliffs  of  the  up- 
country  river  : arranges  all  matters  therein,  for  bed  and 
board,  at  small  cost.  Night  by  night  the  stream  murmurs 
to  him,  day  by  day  the  vine-leaves  give  their  shade  ; and, 
daily  by  the  horizon’s  breadth  so  much  nearer  Heaven,  the 
fore-running  sun  goes  down  for  him  beyond  the  glowing 
water  ; — there,  where  now  the  peasant  woman  trots  home- 
wards between  her  panniers,  and  the  saw  rests  in  the  half- 
cleft  wood,  and  the  village  spire  rises  grey  against  the  farthest 
light,  in  Turners  * Loireside.’  * 

All  which  things,  though  not  themselves  wdthout  profit,  my 
special  reason  for  telling  you  now,  has  been  that  you  might 
understand  the  significance  of  what  chanced  first  on  Clovis’ 
march  south  against  the  Visigoths. 

“Having  passed  the  Loire  at  Tours,  he  traversed  the  lands 
of  the  abbey  of  St.  Martin,  which  he  declared  inviolate,  and 
refused  permission  to  his  soldiers  to  touch  anything,  save 
w7ater  and  grass  for  their  horses.  So  rigid  were  his  orders, 
and  the  obedience  he  exacted  in  this  respect,  that  a Frankish 
soldier  having  taken,  without  the  consent  of  the  owner,  some 
hay,  which  belonged  to  a poor  man,  saying  in  raillery  “ that 
it  was  but  grass,”  he  caused  the  aggressor  to  be  put  to  death, 
exclaiming  that  “ Victory  could  not  be  expected,  if  St.  Martin 
should  be  offended.” 

Now,  mark  you  wrell,  this  passage  of  the  Loire  at  Tours  is 
virtually  the  fulfilment  of  the  proper  bounds  of  the  French 
kingdom,  and  the  sign  of  its  approved  and  securely  set  power 
is  “ Honour  to  the  poor  ! ” Even  a little  grass  is  not  to  be 
stolen  from  a poor  man,  on  pain  of  Death.  So  wfills  the  Chris- 
tian knight  of  Homan  armies  ; throned  now  high  with  God. 

* Modern  Painters,  Plate  73. 


298 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  VST 


So  wills  the  first  Christian  king  of  far  victorious  Franks  . 
here  baptized  to  God  in  Jordan  of  his  goodly  land,  as  he  goes 
over  to  possess  it. 

How  long  ? 

Until  that  same  Sign  should  be  read  backwards  from  a 
degenerate  throne ; — until,  message  being  brought  that  the 
poor  of  the  French  people  had  no  bread  to  eat,  answer  should 
be  returned  to  them  “ They  may  eat  grass.”  Whereupon — 
by  St.  Martin’s  faubourg,  and  St.  Martin’s  gate — there  go, 
forth  commands  from  the  Poor  Man’s  Knight  against  the 
King — which  end  his  Feasting. 

And  be  this  much  remembered  by  you,  of  the  power  over 
French  souls,  past  and  to  come,  of  St.  Martin  of  Tours. 


NOTES  TO  CHAPTER  I. 


The  reader  will  please  observe  that  notes  immediately  necessary  to 
the  understanding  of  the  text  will  be  given,  with  numbered  references, 
under  the  text  itself  ; while  questions  of  disputing  authorities,  or  quo- 
tations of  supporting  documents  will  have  lettered  references,  and  be 
thrown  together  at  the  end  of  each  chapter.  One  good  of  this  method 
will  be  that,  after  the  numbered  notes  are  all  right,  if  I see  need  of  far- 
ther explanation,  as  I revise  the  press,  I can  insert  a letter  referring  to 
a final  note  without  confusion  of  the  standing  types.  There  will  be 
some  use  also  in  the  final  notes,  in  summing  the  chapters,  or  saying 
what  is  to  be  more  carefully  remembered  of  them.  Thus  just  now  it  is 
of  no  consequence  to  remember  that  the  first  taking  of  Amiens  was  in 
445,  because  that  is  not  the  founding  of  the  Merovingian  dynasty  ; 
neither  that  Merovseus  seized  the  throne  in  447  and  died  ten  years 
later.  The  real  date  to  be  remembered  is  481,  when  Clovis  himself 
comes  to  the  throne,  a boy  of  fifteen  ; and  the  three  battles  of  Clovis’ 
reign  to  be  remembered  are  Soissons,  Tolbiac,  and  Poitiers — remember- 
ing also  that  this  was  the  first  of  the  three  great  battles  of  Poitiers  ; — 
how  the  Poitiers  district  came  to  have  such  importance  as  a battle-posi- 
tion, we  must  afterwards  discover  if  we  can.  Of  Queen  Clotilde  and 
her  flight  from  Burgundy  to  her  Frank  lover  we  must  hear  more  in 
next  chapter, — the  story  of  the  vase  at  Soissons  is  given  in  “ The  Pic- 
torial History  of  France,”  but  must  be  deferred  also,  with  such  comment 
as  it  needs,  to  next  chapter  ; for  I wish  the  reader’s  mind,  in  the  close 
of  this  first  number,  to  be  left  fixed  on  two  descriptions  of  the  modern 
‘ Frank’  (taking  that  word  in  its  Saracen  sense),  as  distinguished  from 
the  modern  Saracen.  The  first  description  is  by  Colonel  Butler,  entire- 
ly true  and  admirable,  except  in  the  implied  extension  of  the  contrast 
to  olden  time  : for  the  Saxon  soul  under  Alfred,  the  Teutonic  under 
Charlemagne,  and  the  Frank  under  St.  Louis,  were  quite  as  religious 
as  any  Asiatic’s,  though  more  practical ; it  is  only  the  modern  mob  of 
kingless  miscreants  in  the  West,  who  have  sunk  themselves  by  gam- 
bling, swindling,  machine-making,  and  gluttony,  into  the  scurviest  louts 
that  have  ever  fouled  the  Earth  with  the  carcasses  she  lent  them. 

“ Of  the  features  of  English  character  brought  to  light  by  the  spread 
of  British  dominion  in  Asia,  there  is  nothing  more  observable  than  the 


300 


NOTES. 


contrast  between  the  religious  bias  of  Eastern  thought  and  the  innate 
absence  of  religion  in  the  Anglo-Saxon  mind.  Turk  and  Greek,  Buddh- 
ist and  Armenian,  Copt  and  Parsee,  all  manifest  in  a hundred  ways 
of  daily  life  the  great  fact  of  their  belief  in  a God.  In  their  vices  as 
well  as  in  their  virtues  the  recognition  of  Deity  is  dominant. 

“ With  the  Western,  on  the  contrary,  the  outward  form  of  practising 
belief  in  a God  is  a thing  to  be  lialf-ashamed  of — something  to  hide.  A 
procession  of  priests  in  the  Strada  Reale  would  probable  cause  an  aver- 
age Briton  to  regard  it  with  less  tolerant  eye  than  he  would  cast  upon  a 
Juggernaut  festival  in  Orissa:  but  to  each  alike  would  he  display  the 
same  iconoclasm  of  creed,  the  same  idea,  not  the  less  fixed  because  it  is 
seldom  expressed  in  words  : “ You  pray  ; therefore  I do  not  think  much 
of  you.”  But  there  is  a deeper  difference  between  East  and  West  lying 
beneath  this  incompatibility  of  temper  on  the  part  of  modern  English- 
men to  accept  the  religious  habit  of  thought  in  the  East.  All  Eastern 
peoples  possess  this  habit  of  thought.  It  is  the  one  tie  which  links  to- 
gether their  widely  differing  races.  Let  us  give  an  illustration  of  our 
meaning.  On  an  Austrian  Lloyd’s  steamboat  in  the  Levant  a traveller 
from  Bey  rout  will  frequently  see  strange  groups  of  men  crowded  to- 
gether on  the  quarter-deck.  In  the  morning  the  missal  books  of  the 
Greek  Church  will  be  laid  along  the  bulwarks  of  the  ship,  and  a couple 
of  Russian  priests,  coming  from  Jerusalem,  will  be  busy  muttering 
mass.  A yard  to  right  or  left  a Turkish  pilgrim,  returning  from  Mecca, 
sits  a respectful  observer  of  the  scene.  It  is  prayer,  and  therefore  it  is 
holy  in  his  sight.  So,  too,  when  the  evening  hour  has  come,  and  the 
Turk  spreads  out  his  bit  of  carpet  for  the  sunset  prayers  and  obeisance 
towards  Mecca,  the  Greek  looks  on  in  silence,  without  trace  of  scorn  in 
his  face,  for  it  is  again  the  worship  of  the  Creator  by  the  created.  They 
are  both  fulfilling  the  first  law  of  the  East — prayer  to  God  ; and  whether 
the  shrine  be  Jerusalem,  Mecca,  or  Lliassa,  the  sanctity  of  worship  sur- 
rounds the  votary,  and  protects  the  pilgrim. 

“Into  this  life  comes  the  Englishman,  frequently  destitute  of  one 
touch  of  sympathy  with,  the  prayers  of  any  people,  or  the  faith  of  any 
creed  ; hence  our  rule  in  the  East  has  ever  rested,  and  will  ever  rest, 
upon  the  bayonet.  We  have  never  yet  got  beyond  the  stage  of  con- 
quest ; never  assimilated  a people  to  our  ways,  never  even  civilised  a 
single  tribe  around  the  wide  dominion  of  our  empire.  It  is  curious 
how  frequently  a well-meaning  Briton  will  speak  of  a foreign  church  or 
temple  as  though  it  had  presented  itself  to  his  mind  in  the  same  light 
in  which  the  City  of  London  appeared  to  Blucher — as  something  to 
loot.  The  other  idea,  that  a priest  was  a person  to  hang,  is  one  which  is 
also  often  observable  in  the  British  brain.  On  one  occasion,  when  we  were 
endeavouring  to  enlighten  our  minds  on  the  Greek  question,  as  it  had 
presented  itself  to  a naval  officer  whose  vessel  had  been  stationed  in 
Greek  and  Adriatic  waters  during  our  occupation  of  Corfu  and  the  other 


NOTES. 


301 


Ionian  Isles,  we  could  only  elicit  from  our  informant  the  fact  that  one 
morning  before  breakfast  he  had  hanged  seventeen  priests.” 

The  second  passage  which  I store  in  these  notes  for  future  use,  is  the 
supremely  magnificent  one,  out  of  a book  full  of  magnificence, — if 
truth  be  counted  as  having  in  it  the  strength  of  deed : Alphonse  Krrr’s 
“Grains  de  Bon  Sens.”  I cannot  praise  either  this  or  his  more  recent 
“ Bourdonnements  ” to  my  own  hearts  content,  simply  because  they 
are  by  a man  utterly  after  my  own  heart,  who  has  been  saying  in 
France,  this  many  a year,  what  I also,  this  many  a year,  have  been 
saying  in  England,  neither  of  us  knowing  of  the  other,  and  both  of  us 
vainly.  (See  pages  11  and  12  of  “Bourdonnements.”)  The  passage 
here  given  is  the  sixty-third  clause  in  “ Grains  de  Bon  Sens.” 

“ Et  tout  cela,  monsieur,  vient  de  ce  qu’il  n’y  a plus  de  croyances — 
de  ce  qu’on  ne  croit  plus  a rien. 

“ Ah ! saperlipopette,  monsieur,  vous  me  la  baillez  belle  ! Vous  dites 
qn’on  ne  croit  plus  a rien  ! Mais  jamais,  a aucune  epoque,  on  n’a  cru 
a tant  de  billevesees,  de  bourdes,  de  mensonges,  de  sottises,  d absurdites 
qu’aujourd’hui. 

“ D'abord,  on  croit  a l’incredulite— lincredulite  est  une  croyance,  une 
religion  tres  exigeante,  qui  a ses  dogmes,  sa  liturgie,  ses  pratiques,  ses 
rites!  . . . son  intolerance,  ses  superstitions.  Nous  avons  des  incredules 
et  des  impies  jesuites,  et  des  incredules  et  des  impies  jansenistes  ; des 
impies  molinistes,  et  des  impies  quietistes;  ’des  impies  pratiquants,  et 
non  pratiquants  ; des  impies  indifferents  et  des  impies  fanatiques;  des 
incredules  cagots  et  des  impies  hypocrites  et  tartuffes. — La  religion  de 
l’incredulite  ne  se  refuse  meme  pas  le  luxe  des  heresies. 

“On  ne  croit  plus  a la  bible,  je  le  veux  bien,  mais  on  croit  aux 
‘ ecritures  ’ des  journaux,  on  croit  an  ‘ sacerdoce  ’ des  gazettes  et  carrt's 
de  papier,  et  a leurs  ‘oracles’  quotidiens. 

“On  croit  au  ‘bapteme’de  la  police  eorrectionnelle , et  de  la  cour 
d’assises — on  appelle  ‘ martyrs’  et  ‘ confesseurs  ’ les  ‘ absents  ’ a Noumea 
et  les  ‘freres’  de  Suisse,  d’Angleterre  et  de  Belgique— et,  quand  on 
parle  des  ‘ martyrs  de  la  Commune  ’ 5a  ne  s’entend  pas  des  assassines, 
mais  des  assassins. 

“ On  se  fait  entei'rer  ‘ civilement,’  on  ne  veut  plus  sur  son  cercueil 
des  pricres  de  l'Eglise,  on  ne  veut  ni  cierges,  ni  chants  religieux, — mais 
on  veut  un  cortege  portant  derriere  la  biere  des  immortelles  rouges; — 
on  veut  une  ‘oraison/  une  ‘predication’  de  Victor  Hugo,  qui  a ajoutc 
cette  speciality  a ses  autres  specialites,  si  bien  qu’un  de  ces  jours  derniers, 
comme  il  suivait  un  convoi  en  amateur,  un  croque-mort  s’approcha  de 
iui,  le  poussa  du  coude,  et  lui  dit  en  souriant:  ‘Est-ce  que  nous  n'au- 
rons  pas  quelque  chose  de  vous,  aujourd’liui  ?’ — Et  cette  predication  il 
la  lit  ou  la  recite— on,  s’il  ne  juge  pas  a propos  ‘ d’officier  ’ lui-meme, 
13'il  s’agit  d’un  mort  de  plus,  il  envoie  pour  la  psalmodier  M.  Meurice 


302 


NOTES . 


ou  tout  autre  ‘ pretre  ’ ou  ‘ enfant  de  coeur  ’ du  1 Dieu.’ — A defaut  de  M. 
Hugo,  s’il  s’agit  d’un  citoyen  obscur,  on  se  contente  d une  horn  .'lie  im- 
provisee  pour  la  dixieme  fois  par  n'importe  quel  depute  intransigeant 
— et  le  Miserere  est  remplace  par  les  cris  de  ‘ Vive  la  Republique  ! ’ 
pousses  dans  le  cimetiere. 

“ On  n’entre  plus  dans  les  eglises,  mais  on  frequente  les  brasseries  et 
les  cabarets  ; on  y officie,  on  y celebre  les  mystcres,  on  y chante  les 
louanges  d une  prctendue  republique  sacro-sainte , une,  indivisible, 
democratique,  sociale,  athenienne,  intransigeante,  despotique,  invisible 
quoique  etant  partout.  On  y communie  sous  differentes  especes ; le 
matin  (matines)  on  ‘tue  le  ver  ’ avec  le  vin  blanc, — il  y a plus  tard  les 
vepres  de  1’ absinthe,  auxquelles  on  se  ferait  un  crime  de  manquer 
d assiduite. 

“On  lie  croit  plus  en  Dieu,  mais  on  croit  pieusement  en  M.  Gam- 
betta,  en  MM.  Marcou,  Naquet,  Barodet,  Tartempion,  etc.,  et  en  toute 
une  longue  litanie  de  saints  et  de  (Hi  minores  tels  que  Goutte-Noire, 
Polosse,  Boriasse  et  Silibat,  le  heros  lyonnais. 

“On  croit  a ‘ limmuabilite  ’ de  M.  Thiers,  qui  a dit  avec  aplomb  ‘ Je 
ne  change  jamais,’  et  qui  aujourd  liui  est  a la  fois  le  protectenr  et  le 
protege  de  ceux  qu'il  a passe  une  partie  de  sa  vie  a fusilier,  et  qu’il 
fusillait  encore  hier. 

“ On  croit  an  republicanisme  ‘ immacule  ' de  l’avocat  de  Caliors  qui  a 
jete  par-dessus  bord  tons  les  principes  republicans, — qui  est  a la  fois 
de  son  cote  le  protecteur  et  le  protege  de  M.  Thiers,  qui  hier  l’appelait 
‘fou  furieux,’  deportait  et  fusillait  ses  amis. 

“ Tous  deux,  il  est  vrai,  en  m©me  temps  protecteurs  hypocrites,  et 
protegi  s dupes. 

“On  ne  croit  plus  anx  miracles  anciens,  mais  on  croit  a des  miracles 
nouveaux. 

“ On  croit  a une  republique  sans  le  respect  religieux  et  presque  fana- 
tique  des  lois. 

“ On  croit  qu’on  peut  s’enricliir  en  restant  imprevoyants,  insouciants 
et  paresseux,  et  autrement  que  par  le  travail  et  Teconomie. 

“ On  se  croit  libre  en  obSissant  aveuglement  et  betement  a deux  ou 
trois  coteries. 

“On  se  croit  independant  parce  qu’on  a tue  ou  chasse  un  lion,  et 
qu’on  l’a  remplace  par  deux  douzaines  de  caniches  teints  en  jaune. 

“On  croit  avoir  conquis  le  ‘suffrage  universel  ’ en  votant  par  des 
mots  d’ordre  qui  en  font  le  contraire  du  suffrage  universel, — mene  au 
vote  comme  on  mene  un  troupeau  au  paturage,  avec  cette  difference 
que  qa  ne  nourrit  pas. — D’ailleurs,  par  ce  suffrage  universel  qu’on  croit 
avoir  et  qu’on  n’a  pas, — il  faudrait  croire  que  les  soldats  doivent  com- 
mander au  general,  les  clievaux  mener  le  cocher ; — croire  que  deux 
radis  valent  mieux  qu’une  truffe,  deux  cailloux  mieux  qu’un  diamant, 
deux  crottins  mieux  qu'une  rose. 


NOTES. 


303 


“ On  se  croit  en  Re'publique,  parce  que  quelques  demi-quarterons  de 
farceurs  occupent  les  memes  places,  emargent  les  memes  appointments, 
pratiquent  les  memes  abus,  que  ceux  qu’on  a renverses  a leur  benefice. 

“ On  se  croit  un  people  opprime,  heroique,  que  brise  ses  fers,  et  n'est 
qu’un  domestique  capricieux  qui  aime  a changer  de  maitres. 

“ On  croit  au  genie  d avocats  de  sixieme  ordre,  qui  lie  se  sont  jetcs 
dans  la  politique  et  naspirent  au  gouvernement  despotique  de  la  Franca 
que  faute  d’avoir  pu  gagner  lionaetement,  sans  grand  travail,  dans 
1 exercice  d’une  profession  correcte,  une  vie  obscure  humectee  de  cliopes. 

“ On  croit  que  des  hommes  devoyes,  declasses,  decaves,  fruits  secs, 
etc.,  qui  n’ont  etudie  que  le  ‘ domino  a quatre  ’ et  le  ‘ bezigue  en  quinze 
cents,’  se  reveillent  un  matin, — apres  un  sommeil  alourdi  par  le  tabac 
et  la  biere — possedant  la  science  de  la  politique,  et  l’art  de  ia  guerre  ; et 
aptes  a etre  dictateurs,  generaux,  ministres,  prefets,  sous-prefets,  etc. 

“ Et  les  soi-disant  conservateiirs  eux-memes  croient  que  la  France 
peut  se  relever  et  vivre  tant  qu’on  n'aura  pas  fait  justice  de  ce  pretendu 
suiirage  universel  qui  est  le  contraire  du  suffrage  universel. 

“ Les  croyances  ont  subi  le  sort  de  ce  serpent  de  la  fable— coupe, 
hache  par  morceaux,  dont  cliaque  troiifon  devenait  un  serpent. 

“ Les  croyances  se  sont  changees  en  monnaie — en  billon  de  credulites. 

tfEt  pour  finir  la  liste  bien  incomplete  des  croyances  et  des  credulites 
— vous  croyez , vous,  qu  on  ne  croit  a rien ! ” 


304 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US 


CHAPTER  II. 

UNDER  THE  DRACHENFELS. 

1.  Without  ignobly  trusting  the  devices  of  artificial  mem- 
ory— far  less  slighting  the  pleasure  and  power  of  resolute  and 
thoughtful  memory — my  younger  readers  will  find  it  ex- 
tremely useful  to  note  any  coincidences  or  links  of  number 
which  may  serve  to  secure  in  their  minds  what  may  be  called 
Dates  of  Anchorage,  round  which  others,  less  important,  may 
swing  at  various  cables’  lengths. 

Thus,  it  will  be  found  primarily  a most  simple  and  conven- 
ient arrangement  of  the  years  since  the  birth  of  Christ,  to 
divide  them  by  fives  of  centuries, — that  is  to  say,  by  the 
marked  periods  of  the  fifth,  tenth,  fifteenth,  and,  now  fast 
nearing  us,  twentieth  centuries. 

And  this — at  first  seemingly  formal  and  arithmetical — divi- 
sion, will  be  found,  as  we  use  it,  very  singularly  emphasized 
by  signs  of  most  notable  change  in  the  knowledge,  disciplines, 
and  morals  of  the  human  race. 

2.  All  dates,  it  must  farther  be  remembered,  falling  within 
the  fifth  century,  begin  with  the  number  4 (401,  402,  etc.) ; 
and  all  dates  in  the  tenth  century  with  the  number  9 (901, 
902,  etc.) ; and  all  dates  in  the  fifteenth  century  with  the  num- 
ber 14  (1401,  1402,  etc.). 

In  our  immediate  subject  of  study,  we  are  concerned  with 
the  first  of  these  marked  centuries — the  fifth — of  which  I will 
therefore  ask  you  to  observe  two  very  interesting  divisions. 

All  dates  of  years  in  that  century,  we  said,  must  begin  with 
the  number  4. 

If  you  halve  it  for  the  second  figure,  you  get  42. 

And  if  you  double  it  for  the  second  figure,  you  get  48. 

Add  1,  for  the  third  figure,  to  each  of  these  numbers,  and 
you  get  421  and  481,  which  two  dates  you  will  please  fasten 
well  down,  and  let  there  be  no  drifting  about  of  them  in  your 
heads. 

For  the  first  is  the  date  of  the  birth  of  Venice  herself,  and 


Plate  II. — The  Bible  of  Amiens. 
Northern  Porch  before  Restoration. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


305 


her  dukedom,  (see  c St.  Mark’s  Rest,’  Part  L,  p.  30) ; and  the 
second  is  the  date  of  birth  of  the  French  Venice,  and  her 
kingdom  ; Clovis  being  in  that  year  crowned  in  Amiens. 

3.  These  are  the  great  Birthdays- — Birthdates — in  the  fifth 
century,  of  Nations.  Its  Deathdays  we  will  count,  at  another 
time. 

Since,  not  for  dark  Rialto’s  dukedom,  nor  for  fair  France’s 
kingdom,  only,  are  these  two  years  to  be  remembered  above 
all  others  in  the  wild  fifth  century  ; but  because  they  are  also 
the  birth-years  of  a great  Lady,  and  greater  Lord,  of  all  future 
Christendom — St.  Genevieve,  and  St.  Benedict. 

Genevieve,  the  £ white  wave  ’ (Laughing  water) — the  purest 
of  all  the  maids  that  have  been  named  from  the  sea-foam  or 
the  rivulet’s  ripple,  unsullied, — not  the  troubled  and  troubling 
Aphrodite,  but  the  Leucothea  of  Ulysses,  the  guiding  wave  of 
deliverance. 

White  wave  on  the  blue — whether  of  pure  lake  or  sunny 
sea — (thenceforth  the  colours  of  France,  blue  field  with  white 
lilies),  she  is  always  the  type  of  purity,  in  active  brightness  of 
the  entire  soul  and  life — (so  distinguished  from  the  quieter 
and  restricted  innocence  of  St.  Agnes), — and  all  the  traditions 
of  sorrow  in  the  trial  or  failure  of  noble  womanhood  are  con- 
nected with  her  name  ; Ginevra,  in  Italian,  passing  into 
Shakespeare’s  Imogen  ; and  Guinevere,  the  torrent  wave  of 
the  British  mountain  streams,  of  whose  pollution  your  mod- 
ern sentimental  minstrels  chant  and  moan  to  you,  lugubri- 
ously useless  ; — but  none  tell  you,  that  I hear  of  the  victory 
and  might  of  this  white  wave  of  France. 

4.  A shepherd  maid  she  was — -a,  tiny  thing,  barefooted,  bare- 
headed— such  as  you  may  see  running  wild  and  innocent,  less 
cared  for  now  than  their  sheep,  over  many  a hillside  of  France 
and  Italy.  Tiny  enough  ; — seven  years  old,  all  told,  when 
first  one  hears  of  her : cc  Seven  times  one  are  seven,  (I  am 
old,  you  may  trust  me,  linnet,  linnet*),”  and  all  around  her — 
fierce  as  the  Furies,  and  wild  as  the  winds  of  heaven — the 
thunder  of  the  Gothic  armies  reverberated  over  the  ruins  of 
the  world. 

* Miss  Ingelow. 


306 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US” 


5.  Two  leagues  from  Paris,  ( Roman  Paris,  soon  to  pass  away 
with  Rome  herself,)  the  little  thing  keeps  her  flock,  not  even 
her  own,  nor  her  father’s  flock,  like  David  ; she  is  the  hired 
servant  of  a richer  farmer  of  Nanterre.  Who  can  tell  me  any- 
thing about  Nanterre? — which  of  our  pilgrims  of  this  omni- 
speculant,  omni-nescient  age  has  thought  of  visiting  what 
shrine  may  be  there  ? I don’t  know  even  on  what  side  of 
Paris  it  lies,*  nor  under  which  heap  of  railway  cinders  and 
iron  one  is  to  conceive  the  sheep-walks  and  blossomed  fields 
of  fairy  Saint  Phyllis.  There  were  such  left,  even  in  my  time, 
between  Paris  and  St.  Denis,  (see  the  prettiest  chapter  in  all 
the  c£  Mysteries  of  Paris,”  where  Fleur  de  Marie  runs  wild  in 
them  for  the  first  time),  but  now,  I suppose,  Saint  Phyllis’s 
native  earth  is  all  thrown  up  into  bastion  and  glacis,  (profit- 
able and  blessed  of  all  saints,  and  her,  as  these  have  since 
proved  themselves !),  or  else  are  covered  with  manufactories 
and  cabarets.  Seven  years  old  she  was,  then,  when  on  Ins 
way  to  England  from  Auxerre,  St.  Germain  passed  a night  in 
her  village,  and  among  the  children  who  brought  him  on  his 
way  in  the  morning  in  more  kindly  manner  than  Elisha’s  con- 
voy, noticed  this  one — wider-eyed  in  reverence  than  the  rest ; 
drew  her  to  him,  questioned  her,  and  was  sweetly  answered 
That  she  would  fain  be  Christ’s  handmaid.  And  he  hung 
round  her  neck  a small  copper  coin,  marked  with  the  cross. 
Thenceforward  Genevieve  held  herself  as  “separated  from 
the  world.” 

6.  It  did  not  turn  out  so,  however.  Far  the  contrary.  You 
must  think  of  her,  instead,  as  the  first  of  the  Parisiennes. 
Queen  of  Vanity  Fair,  that  was  to  be,  sedately  poor  St.  Phyllis, 
with  her  copper-crossed  farthing  about  her  neck  ! More  than 
Nitocris  was  to  Egypt,  more  than  Semiramis  to  Nineveh,  more 
than  Zenobia  to  the  city  of  palm  trees — this  seven-years-old 
shepherd  maiden  became  to  Paris  and  her  France.  You  have 
not  heard  of  her  in  that  kind  ? — No  : how  should  you  ? — for 
she  did  not  lead  armies,  but  stayed  them,  and  all  her  power 
was  in  peace. 

7.  There  are,  however,  some  seven  or  eight  and  twenty  lives 
* On  inquiry,  I find  in  the  flat  between  Paris  and  Sevres. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


307 


of  her,  I believe  ; into  the  literature  of  which  I cannot  enter, 
nor  need,  all  having  been  ineffective  in  producing  any  clear 
picture  of  her  to  the  modern  French  or  English  mind  ; and 
leaving  one’s  own  poor  sagacities  and  fancy  to  gather  and 
shape  the  sanctity  of  her  into  an  intelligible,  I do  not  say  a 
credible , form  ; for  there  is  no  question  here  about  belief, — 
the  creature  is  as  real  as  Joan  of  Arc,  and  far  more  powerful ; 
— she  is  separated,  just  as  St.  Martin  is,  by  his  patience,  from 
too  provocative  prelates — by  her  quietness  of  force,  from  the 
pitiable  crowd  of  feminine  martyr  saints. 

There  are  thousands  of  religious  girls  who  have  never  got 
themselves  into  any  calendars,  but  have  wasted  and  wearied 
away  their  lives — heaven  knows  why,  for  we  cannot ; but  here 
is  one,  at  any  rate,  who  neither  scolds  herself  to  martyrdom, 
nor  frets  herself  into  consumption,  but  becomes  a tower  of  the 
Flock,  and  builder  of  folds  for  them  all  her  days. 

8.  The  first  thing,  then,  you  have  to  note  of  her,  is  that 
she  is  a pure  native  Gaul.  She  does  not  come  as  a missionary 
out  of  Hungary,  or  Illyria,  or  Egypt,  or  ineffable  space  ; but 
grows  at  Nanterre,  like  a marguerite  in  the  dew,  the  first 
“ Heine  Blanche  ” of  Gaul. 

I have  not  used  this  ugly  word  c Gaul  ’ before,  and  we  must 
be  quite  sure  what  it  means,  at  once,  though  it  will  cost  us  a 
long  parenthesis. 

9.  During  all  the  years  of  the  rising  power  of  Home,  her 
people  called  everybody  a Gaul  who  lived  north  of  the  sources 
of  Tiber.  If  you  are  not  content  with  that  general  statement, 
you  may  read  the  article  “ Gallia  ” in  Smith’s  dictionary, 
which  consists  of  seventy-one  columns  of  close  print,  contain- 
ing each  as  much  as  three  of  my  pages ; and  tells  you  at  the 
end  of  it,  that  “ though  long,  it  is  not  complete.”  You  may, 
however,  gather  from  it,  after  an  attentive  perusal,  as  much 
as  I have  above  told  you. 

But,  as  early  as  the  second  century  after  Christ,  and  much 
more  distinctly  in  the  time  with  which  we  are  ourselves  con  • 
cemed — the  fifth — the  wild  nations  opposed  to  Rome,  and 
partially  subdued,  or  held  at  bay  by  her,  had  resolved  them- 
selves into  two  distinct  masses,  belonging  to  two  distinct  lati- 


308  “ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US.” 

tilde*.  One,  fixed  in  habitation  of  the  pleasant  temperate  zone 
of  Europe — England  with  her  western  mountains,  the  healthy 
limestone  plateaux  and  granite  mounts  of  France,  the  German 
labyrinths  of  wroody  hill  and  winding  thal,  from  the  Tyrol  to 
the  Hartz,  and  all  the  vast  enclosed  basin  and  branching  val- 
leys of  the  Carpathians.  Think  of  these  four  districts,  briefly 
and  clearly,  as  ‘Britain,’  ‘Gaul,’  ‘Germany,’  and  ‘Dacia.’ 

10.  North  of  these  rudely  but  patiently  resident  races,  pos- 
sessing fields  and  orchards,  quiet  herds,  homes  of  a sort, 
moralities  and  memories  not  ignoble,  dwelt,  or  rather  drift- 
ed, and  shook,  a shattered  chain  of  gloomier  tribes,  piratical 
mainly,  and  predatory,  nomade  essentially  ; homeless,  of  ne- 
cessity, finding  no  stay  nor  comfort  in  earth,  or  bitter  sky  : 
desperately  wandering  along  the  waste  sands  and  drenched 
morasses  of  the  flat  country  stretching  from  the  mouths  of  the 
Rhine,  to  those  of  the  Vistula,  and  beyond  Vistula  nobody 
knows  where,  nor  needs  to  know.  Waste  sands  and  rootless 
bogs  their  portion,  ice-fastened  and  cloud-shadowed,  for  many 
a day  of  the  rigorous  year  : shallow  pools  and  oozings  and 
windings  of  retarded  streams,  black  decay  of  neglected  woods, 
scarcely  habitable,  never  loveable  ; to  this  day  the  inner  main- 
lands little  changed  for  good  * — and  their  inhabitants  now 
fallen  even  on  sadder  times. 

11.  For  in  the  fifth  century  they  had  herds  of  cattle  f to 
drive  and  kill,  unpreserved  hunting-grounds  full  of  game  and 
wild  deer,  tameable  reindeer  also  then,  even  so  far  in  the 
south  ; spirited  hogs,  good  for  practice  of  fight  as  in  Melea- 
ger’s time,  and  afterwards  for  bacon  ; furry  creatures  innu- 
merable, all  good  for  meat  or  skin.  Fish  of  the  infinite  sea 
breaking  their  bark-fibre  nets ; fowl  innumerable,  migrant 
in  the  skies,  for  their  flint-headed  arrows  ; bred  horses  for 

* See  generally  any  description  that  Carlyle  has  had  occasion  to  give 
of  Prussian  or  Polish  ground,  or  edge  of  Baltic  shore. 

f Gigantic — and  not  yet  fossilized ! See  Gibbon’s  note  on  the  death  of 
T’heodebert  : “ The  King  pointed  his  spear — the  Bull  overturned  a tree 
on  his  head , — he  died  the  same  day.” — vii.  255.  The  Horn  of  Uri  and 
her  shield,  with  the  chiefly  towering  crests  of  the  German  helm,  attest 
the  terror  of  these  Aurochs  herds. 


TIIE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


309 


their  own  riding ; ships  of  no  mean  size,  and  of  all  sorts,  fiat- 
bottomed  for  the  oozy  puddles,  keeled  and  decked  for 
strong  Elbe  stream  and  furious  Baltic  on  the  one  side, — for 
mountain-cleaving  Danube  and  the  black  lake  of  Colehos  on 
the  south. 

12.  And  they  were,  to  all  outward  aspect,  and  in  all  felt 
force,  the  living  powers  of  the  world,  in  that  long  hour  of  its 
transfiguration.  All  else  known  once  for  awful,  had  become 
formalism,  folly,  or  shame  : — the  Roman  armies,  a mere 
sworded  mechanism,  fast  falling  confused,  every  sword  against 
its  fellow  ; — the  Roman  civil  multitude,  mixed  of  slaves,  slave- 
masters,  and  harlots  ; the  East,  cut  off  from  Europe  by  the 
intervening  weakness  of  the  Greek.  These  starving  troops  of 
the  Black  forests  and  White  seas,  themselves  half  wolf,  half 
drift-wood,  (as  we  once  called  ourselves  Lion-hearts,  and  Oak- 
hearts,  so  they),  merciless  as  the  herded  hound,  enduring  as 
the  wild  birch- tree  and  pine.  You  will  hear  of  few  beside 
them  for  five  centuries  yet  to  come : Visigoths,  west  of  Vis- 
tula ; — Ostrogoths,  east  of  Vistula  ; radiant  round  little  Holy 
Island  (Heligoland),  our  own  Saxons,  and  Hamlet  the  Dane, 
and  his  foe  the  sledded  Polack  on  the  ice, — all  these  south  of 
Baltic  ; and,  pouring  across  Baltic,  constantly,  her  mountain - 
ministered  strength,  Scandinavia,  until  at  last  she  for  a time 
rules  all,  and  the  Norman  name  is  of  disputeless  dominion, 
from  the  North  Cape  to  Jerusalem. 

13.  This  is  the  apparent,  this  the  only  recognised  world 
history,  as  I have  said,  for  five  centuries  to  come.  And  yet 
the  real  history  is  underneath  all  this.  The  wandering  armies 
are,  in  the  heart  of  them,  only  living  hail,  and  thunder,  and 
fire  along  the  ground.  But  the  Suffering*  Life,  the  rooted 
heart  of  native  humanity,  growing  up  in  eternal  gentleness, 
howsoever  wasted,  forgotten,  or  spoiled, — itself  neither  wast- 
ing, nor  wandering,  nor  slaying,  but  unconquerable  by  grief 
or  death,  became  the  seed  ground  of  all  love,  that  was  to  be 
born  in  due  time  ; giving,  then,  to  mortality,  what  hope,  joy, 
or  genius  it  could  receive  ; and — if  there  be  immortality — 
rendering  out  of  the  grave  to  the  Church  her  fostering  Saints, 
and  to  Heaven  her  helpful  angels. 


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“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US.” 

14.  Of  this  low-nestling,  speechless,  harmless,  infinitely 
submissive,  infinitely  serviceable  order  of  being,  no  Historian 
ever  takes  the  smallest  notice,  except  when  it  is  robbed,  or 
slain.  I can  give  you  no  picture  of  it,  bring  to  your  ears  no 
murmur  of  it,  nor  cry.  I can  only  show  you  the  absolute 
4 must  have  been  ’ of  its  unrewarded  past,  and  the  way  in 
which  all  we  have  thought  of,  or  been  told,  is  founded  on  the 
deeper  facts  in  its  history,  untliought  of,  and  untold. 

15.  The  main  mass  of  this  innocent  and  invincible  peasant 
life  is,  as  I have  above  told  you,  grouped  in  the  fruitful  and 
temperate  districts  of  (relatively)  mountainous  Europe, — 
reaching,  west  to  east,  from  the  Cornish  Land’s  End  to  the 
mouth  of  the  Danube.  Already,  in  the  times  we  are  now 
dealing  with,  it  was  full  of  native  passion — generosity — and 
intelligence  capable  of  all  things.  Dacia  gave  to  Rome  the 
four  last  of  her  great  Emperors,  * — Britain  to  Christianity  the 
first  deeds,  and  the  final  legends,  of  her  chivalry, — Germany, 
to  all  manhood,  the  truth  and  the  fire  of  the  Frank, — Gaul,  to 
all  womanhood,  the  patience  and  strength  of  St.  Genevieve. 

16.  The  truth , and  the  fire,  of  the  Frank, — I must  repeat 
with  insistance, — for  my  younger  readers  have  probably  been 
in  the  habit  of  thinking  that  the  French  were  more  polite 
than  true.  They  will  find,  if  they  examine  into  the  matter, 
that  only  Truth  can  be  polished  : and  that  all  we  recognize  of 
beautiful,  subtle,  or  constructive,  in  the  manners,  the  lan- 
guage, or  the  architecture  of  the  French,  comes  of  a pure 
veracity  in  their  nature,  which  you  will  soon  feel  in  the  living 
creatures  themselves  if  you  love  them  : if  you  understand 
even  their  worst  rightly,  their  very  Revolution  was  a revolt 

* Claudius,  Aurelian,  Probus,  Constantins  ; and  after  the  division  of 
the  empire,  to  the  East,  Justinian.  44  The  emperor  Justinian  was  bom 
of  an  obscure  race  of  Barbarians,  the  inhabitants  of  a wild  and  desolate 
country,  to  which  the  names  of  Dardania,  of  Dacia,  and  of  Bulgaria 
have  been  successively  applied.  The  names  of  these  Dardanian  peas- 
ants are  Gothic,  and  almost  English.  Justinian  is  a translation  of 
Uprauder  (upright)  ; his  father,  Sabatius, — in  Grseco  barbarous  lan- 
guage, Stipes — was  styled  in  his  village  ‘ Istock  ’ (Stock).” — Gibbon, 
beginning  of  chap.  xl.  and  note. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


311 


against  lies  ; and  against  the  betrayal  of  Love.  No  people 
had  ever  been  so  loyal  in  vain. 

17.  That  they  were  originally  Germans,  they  themselves  I 
suppose  would  now  gladly  forget ; but  how  they  shook  the 
dust  of  Germany  off  their  feet — and  gave  themselves  a new 
name — is  the  first  of  the  phenomena  which  we  have  now  atten- 
tively to  observe  respecting  them. 

“The  most  rational  critics,”  says  Mr.  Gibbon  in  his  tenth 
chapter,  “ suppose  that  about  the  year  240  ” ( suppose  then,  we, 
for  our  greater  comfort,  say  about  the  year  250,  half-wray  to 
end  of  fifth  century,  where  we  are, — ten  years  less  or  more,  in 
cases  of  ‘ supposing  about,’  do  not  much  matter,  but  some 
floating  buoy  of  a date  wall  be  handy  here.) 

‘About’  a.d.  250,  then,  “a  new  confederacy  was  formed 
under  the  name  of  Franks,  by  the  old  inhabitants  of  the  lower 
Rhine  and  the  Weser.” 

18.  My  own  impression,  concerning  the  old  inhabitants  of 
the  lower  Rhine  and  the  Weser,  would  have  been  that  they 
consisted  mostly  of  fish,  with  superficial  frogs  and  ducks  ; but 
Mr.  Gibbon’s  note  on  the  passage  informs  us  that  the  new 
confederation  composed  itself  of  human  creatures,  in  these 
items  following. 


1.  The  Chauci,  who  lived  we  are  not  told  where. 


2.  The  Sicambri 

3.  The  Attuarii 
4 The  Bructeri 

5.  The  Chamavii 

6.  The  Catti 


in  the  Principality  of  Waldeck. 
in  the  Duchy  of  Berg, 
on  the  banks  of  the  Lippe. 
in  the  country  of  the  Bructeri. 
in  Hessia. 


All  this  I believe  you  will  be  rather  easier  in  your  minds  if 
you  forget  than  if  you  remember  ; but  if  it  please  you  to  read, 
or  re-read,  (or  best  of  all,  get  read  to  you  by  some  real  Miss 
Isabella  Wardour,)  the  story  of  Martin  Waldeck  in  the  ‘ An- 
tiquary,’ you  will  gain  from  it  a sufficient  notion  of  the  central 
character  of  “ the  Principality  of  Waldeck  ” connected  securely 
with  that  important  German  word;  ‘woody’ — or  'wood  ish,' 
I suppose  ? — descriptive  of  rock  and  half -grown  forest ; to* 


312 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US. 


gether  with  some  wholesome  reverence  for  Scott’s  instinct- 
ively deep  foundations  of  nomenclature. 

19.  But  for  our  present  purpose  we  must  also  take  seriously 
to  our  maps  again,  and  get  things  within  linear  limits  of  space. 

All  the  maps  of  Germany  which  I have  myself  the  privilege 
of  possessing,  diffuse  themselves,  just  north  of  Frankfort,  into 
the  likeness  of  a painted  window  broken  small  by  Puritan 
malice,  and  put  together  again  by  ingenious  churchwardens 
with  every  bit  of  it  wrong  side  upwards  ; — this  curious  vitrerie 
purporting  to  represent  the  sixty,  seventy,  eighty,  or  ninety 
dukedoms,  marquisates,  counties,  baronies,  electorates,  and 
the  like,  into  which  hereditary  Alemannia  cracked  itself  in 
that  latitude.  But  under  the  mottling  colours,  and  through 
the  jotted  and  jumbled  alphabets  of  distracted  dignities — be- 
sides a chain-mail  of  black  railroads  over  all,  the  chains  of  it 
not  in  links,  but  bristling  with  legs,  like  centipedes, — a hard 
forenoon’s  work  with  good  magnifying-glass  enables  one  ap- 
proximately to  make  out  the  course  of  the  Weser,  and  the 
names  of  certain  towns  near  its  sources,  deservedly  memo- 
rable. 

20.  In  case  you  have  not  a forenoon  to  spare,  nor  eyesight 
to  waste,  this  much  of  merely  necessary  abstract  must  serve 
you, — that  from  the  Draclienfels  and  its  six  brother  felsen, 
eastward,  trending  to  the  north,  there  runs  and  spreads  a 
straggling  company  of  gnarled  and  mysterious  craglets, 
jutting  and  scowling  above  glens  fringed  by  coppice,  and 
fretful  or  musical  with  stream : the  crags,  in  pious  ages, 
mostly  castled,  for  distantly  or  fancifully  Christian  purposes  ; 
— the  glens,  resonant  of  woodmen,  or  burrowed  at  the  sides 
by  miners,  and  invisibly  tenanted  farther,  underground,  by 
gnomes,  and  above  by  forest  and  other  demons.  The  entire 
district,  clasping  crag  to  crag,  and  guiding  dell  to  dell,  some 
hundred  and  fifty  miles  (with  intervals)  between  the  Dragon 
mountain  above  Rhine,  and  the  Rosin  mountain,  ‘ Hartz  ’ 
shadowy  still  to  the  south  of  the  riding  grounds  of  Black 
Brunswickers  of  indisputable  bodily  presence  ; — shadowy  an- 
ciently with  ‘ Hercynian  ’ (hedge,  or  fence)  forest,  corrupted 
or  coinciding  into  Hartz,  or  Rosin  forest,  haunted  by  ob- 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


313 


scurely  apparent  foresters  of  at  least  resinous,  not  to  say  sul- 
phurous, extraction. 

21.  A hundred  and  fifty  miles  east  to  west,  say  half  as 
much  north  to  south — about  a thousand  square  miles  in  whole 
— of  metalliferous,  coniferous,  and  Ghostiferous  mountain, 
fluent,  and  diffluent  for  us,  both  in  mediaeval  and  recent 
times,  with  the  most  Essential  oil  of  Turpentine,  and  Myrrh 
or  Frankincense  of  temper  and  imagination,  which  may  be 
typified  by  it,  producible  in  Germany  ; — especially  if  we  think 
how  the  more  delicate  uses  of  Rosin,  as  indispensable  to  the 
Fiddle-bow,  have  developed  themselves,  from  the  days  of  St. 
Elizabeth  of  Marburg  to  those  of  St.  Mephistopheles  of 
Weimar. 

22.  As  far  as  I know,  this  cluster  of  wayward  cliff  and 
dingle  has  no  common  name  as  a group  of  hills ; and  it  is 
quite  impossible  to  make  out  the  diverse  branching  of  it  in 
any  maps  I can  lay  hand  on  : but  we  may  remember  easily, 
and  usefully,  that  it  is  all  north  of  the  Maine, — that  it  rests 
on  the  Drachenfels  at  one  end,  and  tosses  itself  away  to  the 
morning  light  with  a concave  swoop,  up  to  the  Hartz,  (Brocken 
summit,  3700  feet  above  sea,  nothing  higher)  : with  one  nota- 
ble interval  for  Weser  stream,  of  which  presently. 

23.  We  will  call  this,  in  future,  the  chain,  or  company,  of 
the  Enchanted  mountains ; and  then  we  shall  all  the  more 
easily  join  on  the  Giant  mountains,  Riesen-Gebirge,  when  we 
want  them  : but  these  are  altogether  higher,  sterner,  and  not 
yet  to  be  invaded  ; the  nearer  ones,  through  which  our  road 
lies,  we  might  perhaps  more  patly  call  the  Goblin  mountains ; 
but  that  would  be  scarcely  reverent  to  St.  Elizabeth,  nor  to 
the  numberless  pretty  chatelaines  of  towers,  and  princesses 
of  park  and  glen,  who  have  made  German  domestic  manners 
sweet  and  exemplary,  and  have  led  their  lightly  rippling  and 
translucent  lives  down  the  glens  of  ages,  until  enchantment 
becomes,  perhaps,  too  canonical,  in  the  Almanach  de  Gotha. 

We  will  call  them  therefore  the  Enchanted  Mountains,  not 
the  Goblin  ; perceiving  gratefully  also  that  the  Rock  spirits  of 
them  have  really  much  more  of  the  temper  of  fairy  physicians 
than  of  gnomes  : each — as  it  were  with  sensitive  hazel  wand 


314 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US” 


instead  of  smiting  rod — beckoning,  out  of  sparry  caves,  effer* 
vescent  Brunnen,  beneficently  salt  and  warm. 

24.  At  the  very  heart  of  this  Enchanted  chain,  then — (and 
the  beneficentest,  if  one  use  it  and  guide  it  rightly,  of  all  the 
Brunnen  there,)  sprang  the  fountain  of  the  earliest  Frank  race  ; 
“ in  the  principality  of  Waldeck,” — you  can  trace  their  current 
to  no  farther  source  ; there  it  rises  out  of  the  earth. 

‘ Frankenberg  ’ (Burg),  on  right  bank  of  the  Ecler,  nineteen 
miles  north  of  Marburg,  you  may  find  marked  clearly  in  the 
map  No.  18  of  Black’s  General  Atlas,  wherein  the  cluster  of 
surrounding  bewitched  mountains,  and  the  valley  of  Eder- 
stream  otherwise  (as  the  village  higher  up  the  dell  still  calls 
itself)  “Engel-Bach,”  “ Angel  Brook,”  joining  that  of  the 
Fulda,  just  above  Cassel,  are  also  delineated  in  a way  intelli- 
gible to  attentive  mortal  eyes.  I should  be  plagued  with  the 
names  in  trying  a woodcut  ; but  a few  careful  pen-strokes,  or 
wriggles,  of  your  own  off-hand  touching,  would  give  you  the 
concurrence  of  the  actual  sources  of  Weser  in  a comfortably 
extricated  form,  with  the  memorable  towns  on  them,  or  just 
south  of  them,  on  the  other  slope  of  the  watershed,  towards 
Maine.  Frankenberg  and  Waldeck  on  Eder,  Fulda  and  Cas- 
sel on  Fulda,  Eisenbach  on  Werra,  who  accentuates  himself 
into  Weser  after  taking  Fulda  for  bride,  as  Tees  the  Greta,  by 
Eisenach,  under  the  Wartzburg,  (of  which  you  have  heard  as  a 
castle  employed  on  Christian  mission  and  Bible  Society  pur-, 
poses),  town-streets  below  hard  paved  with  basalt — name  of  if, 
Iron-ach,  significant  of  Tliuringian  armouries  in  the  old  time, 
— it  is  active  with  mills  for  many  things  yet. 

25.  The  rocks  all  the  way  from  Rhine,  thus  far,  are  jets  and 
spurts  of  basalt  through  irony  sandstone,  with  a strip  of  coal 
or  twro  northward,  by  the  grace  of  God  not  worth  digging  for  ; 
at  Frankenberg  even  a gold  mine ; also,  by  Heaven’s  mercy, 
poor  of  its  ore  ; but  wood  and  iron  always  to  be  had  for  the 
due  trouble  ; and,  of  softer  wealth  above  ground, —game,  corn, 
fruit,  flax,  wine,  wool,  and  hemp  ! Monastic  care  over  all,  in 
Fulda’s  and  Walter’s  houses — which  I find  marked  by  a cross 
as  built  by  some  pious  Walter,  Knight  of  Meiningen  on  the 
Roden-w7asser,  Bottom  water,  as  of  water  having  found  its  way 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


315 


well  down  at  last : so  “ Boden-See,”  of  Rhine  well  got  down 
out  of  Via  Mala. 

26.  And  thus,  having  got  your  springs  of  Weser  clear  from 
the  rock  ; and,  as  it  were,  gathered  up  the  reins  of  your  river, 
you  can  draw  for  yourself,  easily  enough,  the  course  of  its  far- 
ther stream,  flowing  virtually  straight  north,  to  the  North  Sea. 
And  mark  it  strongly  on  your  sketched  map  of  Europe,  next 
to  the  border  Vistula,  leaving  out  Elbe  yet  for  a time.  For 
nowr,  you  may  take  the  whole  space  between  Weser  and  Vistula 
(north  of  the  mountains),  as  wild  barbarian  (Saxon  or  Goth)  ; 
but,  piercing  the  source  of  the  Franks  at  Waldeck,  you  wrill 
find  them  gradually,  but  swiftly,  filling  all  the  space  between 
Weser  and  the  mouths  of  Rhine,  passing  from  mountain  foam 
into  calmer  diffusion  over  the  Netherland,  where  their  stray- 
ing forest  and  pastoral  life  has  at  last  to  embank  itself  into 
muddy  agriculture,  and  in  bleak-flying  sea  mist,  forget  the  sun- 
shine on  its  basalt  crags. 

27.  Whereupon,  ive  must  also  pause,  to  embank  ourselves 
somewhat ; and  before  other  things,  try  what  we  can  under- 
stand in  this  name  of  Frank,  concerning  which  Gibbon  tells 
us,  in  his  sweetest  tones  of  satisfied  moral  serenity — “ The  love 
of  liberty  was  the  ruling  passion  of  these  Germans.  They  de- 
served, they  assumed,  they  maintained,  the  honourable  epithet 
of  Franks,  or  Freemen/’  He  does  not,  however,  tell  us  in 
what  language  of  the  time— Chau cian,  Sicambrian,  Chama- 
vian,  or  Cattian, — ‘ Frank  ’ ever  meant  Free  : nor  can  I find  out 
myself  what  tongue  of  any  time  it  first  belongs  to  ; but  I doubt 
not  that  Miss  Yonge  (‘  History  of  Christian  Names,’  Articles 
on  Frey  and  Frank),  gives  the  true  root,  in  what  she  calls  the 
High  German  “ Frang,”  Free  Lord.  Not  by  any  means  a Free 
Commoner , or  anything  of  the  sort ! But  a person  whose  nat- 
ure and  name  implied  the  existence  around  him,  and  beneath, 
of  a considerable  number  of  other  persons  who  were  by  no 
means  ‘ Frang,’  nor  Frangs.  His  title  is  one  of  the  proudest 
then  maintainable  ; — ratified  at  last  by  the  dignity  of  age 
added  to  that  of  valour,  into  the  Seigneur,  or  Monseigneur, 
not  even  yet  in  the  last  cockney  form  of  it,  * Mossoo,’  wholly 
understood  as  a republican  term  ! 


316 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US” 


28.  So  that,  accurately  thought  of,  the  quality  of  Frankness 
glances  only  with  the  flat  side  of  it  into  any  meaning  'of 
‘ Libre,’  but  with  all  its  cutting  edge,  determinedly,  and  to  all 
time,  it  signifies  Brave,  strong,  and  honest,  above  other  men.* 
The  old  woodland  race  were  never  in  any  wolfish  sense  * free,’ 
but  in  a most  human  sense  Frank,  outspoken,  meaning  what 
they  had  said,  and  standing  to  it,  when  they  had  got  it  out. 
Quick  and  clear  in  word  and  act,  fearless  utterly  and  restless 
always  ; — but  idly  lawless,  or  weakly  lavish,  neither  in  deed 
nor  word.  Their  frankness,  if  you  read  it  as  a scholar  and  a 
Christian,  and  not  like  a modern  half-bred,  half-brained  infi- 
del, knowing  no  tongue  of  all  the  world  but  in  the  slang  of  it, 
is  really  opposed,  not  to  Servitude, — but  to  Shyness  ! f It  is 
to  this  day  the  note  of  the  sweetest  and  Frenchest  of  French 

* Gibbon  touches  the  facts  more  closely  in  a sentence  of  his  22nd  chap- 
ter. “ The  independent  warriors  of  Germany,  who  considered  truth  as  the 
noblest  of  their  virtues , and  freedom  as  the  most  valuable  of  their  posses- 
sions.” He  is  speaking  especially  of  the  Frankish  tribe  of  the  Actuarii, 
against  whom  the  Emperor  Julian  had  to  re-fortify  the  Rhine  from 
Cleves  to  Basle  : but  the  first  letters  of  the  Emperor  Jovian,  after  Julian’s 
death,  “ delegated  the  military  command  of  Gaul  and  Illyrium  (wliat 
a vast  one  it  was,  we  shall  see  hereafter),  to  Malaricli,  a brave  and  faith- 
fid  officer  of  the  nation  of  the  Franks  and  they  remain  the  loyal  allies 
of  Rome  in  her  last  struggle  with  Alanc.  Apparently  for  the  sake  only 
of  an  interesting  variety  of  language,  — and  at  all  events  without  intima- 
tion of  any  causes  of  so  great  a change  in  the  national  character, — we 
find  Mr.  Gibbon  in  his  next  volume  suddenly  adopting  the  abusive  epi- 
thets of  Procopius,  and  calling  the  Franks  “ a light  and  perfidious  na- 
tion ” (vii.  251).  The  only  traceable  grounds  for  this  unexpected  de- 
scription of  them  are  that  they  refuse  to  be  bribed  either  into  friendship 
or  activity,  by  Rome  or  Ravenna  ; and  that  in  his  invasion  of  Italy,  the 
grandson  of  Clovis  did  not  previously  send  exact  warning  of  his  pro- 
posed route,  nor  even  entirely  signify  his  intentions  till  he  had  secured 
the  bridge  of  the  Po  at  Pavia ; afterwards  declaring  his  mind  with  suf- 
ficient distinctness  by  “assaulting,  almost  at  the  same  instant,  the  hostile 
camps  of  the  Goths  and  Romans,  who,  instead  of  uniting  their  arms, 
fled  with  equal  precipitation.” 

f For  detailed  illustration  of  the  word,  see  ‘ Val  d’Arno,’  Lecture  VIII. : 
4 Fors Clavigera,’  Letters XLVI. , Vol.  III.  276,  LXXVII.,  Vol.IV.  25;  and 
Chaucer;  ‘ Romaunt  of  Rose,’  1212 — “ Xext  him  ” (the  knight  sibbe  to  Ar- 
thur) ‘ daunced  dame  F ranchiss  ’—the  English  lines  are  quoted  and  com- 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS . 


317 


character,  that  it  makes  simply  perfect  Servants , Unwearied 
in  protective  friendship,  in  meekly  dextrous  omnificence,  in 
latent  tutorship  ; the  lovingly  availablest  of  valets, — the  men- 
tally and  personally  bonniest  of  bonnes.  But  in  no  capacity 
shy  of  you  ! Though  you  be  the  Duke  or  Duchess  of  Mon- 
taltissimo,  you  will  not  find  them  abashed  at  your  altitude. 
They  will  speak  ‘ up  5 to  you,  when  they  have  a mind. 

29.  Best  of  servants  : best  of  subjects , also,  when  they  have 
an  equally  frank  King,  or  Count,  or  Captal,  to  lead  them  ; of 
which  we  shall  see  proof  enough  in  due  time  ; — but,  instantly, 
note  this  farther,  that,  whatever  side-gleam  of  the  thing  they 
afterwards  called  Liberty  may  be  meant  by  the  Frank  name, 
you  must  at  once  now,  and  always  in  future,  guard  yourself 
from  confusing  their  Liberties  with  their  Activities.  What 
the  temper  of  the  army  may  be  towards  its  chief,  is  one 
question — whether  either  chief  or  army  can  be  kept  six 
months  quiet, — another,  and  a totally  different  one.  That 
they  must  either  be  fighting  somebody  or  going  somewhere,  else, 
their  life  isn’t  worth  living  to  them  ; the  activity  and  mer- 
curial flashing  and  flickering  hither  and  thither,  which  in  the 
soul  of  it  is  set  neither  on  war  nor  rapine,  but  only  on  change 
of  place,  mood — tense,  and  tension  ; — which  never  needs  to 
see  its  spurs  in  the  dish,  but  has  them  always  bright,  and  on, 
and  would  ever  choose  rather  to  ride  fasting  than  sit  feasting, 
— this  childlike  dread  of  being  put  in  a corner,  and  continual 

mented  on  in  tlie  first  lecture  of  ‘ Ariadne  Florentina  ’ ; I give  the 
French  here : — 

“ Apres  tons  ceulx  estoifc  Franchise 
Que  ne  fut  no  brune  ne  brise. 

Ains  fut  com  me  la  neige  blanche 
Courloyse  estoit,  joytuze , et  franche. 

Le  nez  avoit  long  et  tretis, 

Yeulx  vers,  riants  ; sourcilz  faitis  ; 

Les  cheveulx  eut  tres-blons  et  longs 
Simple  fut  comme  les  coulous 
Le  coeur  eut  doulx  et  debonnaire. 

ELle  n'osait  dire  ne  faire 

Nui  c riens  que  faire  ne  deust.'1'1 . 

And  I hope  my  girl  readers  will  never  more  confuse  Franchise  with 
1 Liberty.’ 


318 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US. 


want  of  something  to  do,  is  to  be  watched  by  us  with  wonder* 
ing  sympathy  in  all  its  sometimes  splendid,  but  too  often  un- 
lucky or  disastrous  consequences  to  the  nation  itself  as  well  as 
to  its  neigbours. 

30.  And  this  activity,  which  we  stolid  beef-eaters,  before 
we  had  been  taught  by  modern  science  that  we  were  no  better 
than  baboons  ourselves,  were  wont  discourteously  to  liken  to 
that  of  the  livelier  tribes  of  Monkey,  did  in  fact  so  much  im- 
press the  Hollanders,  when  first  the  irriguous  Franks  gave 
motion  and  current  to  their  marshes,  that  the  earliest  her- 
aldry in  which  we  find  the  Frank  power  blazoned  seems  to  be 
founded  on  a Dutch  endeavour  to  give  some  distantly  satirical 
presentment  of  it.  “ For,”  says  a most  ingenious  historian, 
Mons.  Andre  Favine, — ‘Parisian,  and  Advocate  in  the  High 
Court  of  the  French  Parliament  in  the  year  1620’ — “those 
people  who  bordered  on  the  river  Sala,  called  ‘ Salts,’  by  the  Al- 
lemaignes,  were  on  their  descent  into  Dutch  lands  called  by  the 
Romans  “Franci  Salici” — (whence  ‘ Salique  ’ law  to  come, 
you  observe)  “ and  by  abridgment  ‘Salii,’  as  if  of  the  verb 
‘ salire,’  that  is  to  say  ‘ saulter,’  to  leap” — (and  in  future  there* 
fore — duly  also  to  dance — in  an  incomparable  manner) — “ to 
be  quicke  and  nimble  of  foot,  to  leap  and  mount  w7ell,  a qual- 
ity most  notably  requisite  for  such  as  dwell  in  watrie  and 
marshy  places  ; So  that  while  such  of  the  French  as  dwelt  on 
the  great  course  of  the  river  ” (Rhine)  “ were  called  ‘ Nageurs,’ 
Swimmers,  they  of  the  marshes  were  called  ‘Saulteurs,’ 
Leapers,  so  that  it  was  a nickname  given  to  the  French  in  re- 
gard both  of  their  natural  disposition  and  of  their  dwelling  ; 
as,  yet  to  this  day,  their  enemies  call  them  French  Toades, 
(or  Frogs,  more  properly)  from  whence  grew  the  fable  that 
their  ancient  Kings  carried  such  creatures  in  their  Armes,” 

31.  Without  entering  at  present  into  debate  whether  fable 
or  not,  you  will  easily  remember  the  epithet  ‘ Salian  ’ of  these 
fosse-leaping  and  river-swimming  folk,  (so  that,  as  aforesaid, 
all  the  length  of  Rhine  must  be  refortified  against  them) — 
epithet  however,  it  appears,  in  its  origin  delicately  Saline, 
so  that  we  may  with  good  discretion,  as  we  call  our  seasoned 
mariners,  ‘ old  Salts,’  think  of  these  more  brightly  sparkling 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AHIEHS. 


319 


Franks  as  £ Young  Salts,’ — but  this  equivocated  presently  by 
the  Romans,  with  natural  respect  to  their  martial  fire  and 
‘elan,’ into  ‘Salii’ — exsultantes,* — such  as  their  own  armed 
priests  of  war : and  by  us  now  with  some  little  farther, 
but  slight  equivocation,  into  useful  meaning,  to  be  thought  of 
as  here  first  Salient,  as  a beaked  promontory,  towards  the 
France  we  know  of  ; and  evermore,  in  brilliant  elasticities  of 
temper,  a salient  or  out-sallying  nation  ; lending  to  us  Eng- 
lish presently — for  this  much  of  heraldry  we  may  at  once 
glance  on  to — their  ‘ Leopard,’  not  as  a spotted  or  blotted 
creature,  but  as  an  inevitably  springing  and  pouncing  one,  for 
our  own  kingly  and  princely  shields. 

Thus  much,  of  their  ‘ Salian  ’ epithet  may  be  enough  ; but 
from  the  interpretation  of  the  Frankish  one  we  are  still  as  far 
as  ever,  and  must  be  content,  in  the  meantime,  to  stay  so, 
noting  however,  two  ideas  afterwards  entangled  with  the 
name,  which  are  of  much  descriptive  importance  to  us, 

32.  “ The  French  poet  in  the  first  book  of  his  Franciades/ 
(says  Mons,  Favine  ; but  what  poet  I know  not,  nor  can  en- 
quire) “ encounters  ” (in  the  sense  of  en-quarters,  or  depicts  as 
a herald)  “certain  fables  on  the  name  of  the  French  by  the 
adoption  and  composure  of  two  Gaulish  words  joyned  together, 
Phere-En cos  which  signifieih  £ Bear e-Launce,’  ( — Shake-Lance, 

* Their  first  mischievous  exsultation  into  Alsace  being  invited  by  the 
Homans  themselves,  (or  at  least  by  Constantins  in  his  jealousy  o l 
Julian,) — with  “ presents  and  promises, — the  hopes  of  spoil,  and  a per- 
petual grant  of  all  the  territories  they  were  able  to  subdue.  ” Gibbon, 
chap.  xix.  (3,  208).  By  any  other  historian  than  Gibbon,  who  has  real- 
ly no  fixed  opinion  on  any  character,  or  question,  but,  safe  in  the  gen- 
eral truism  that  the  worst  men  sometimes  do  right,  and  the  best  often  do 
wrong,  praises  when  he  wants  to  round  a sentence,  and  blames  when  he 
cannot  otherwise  edge  one) — it  might  have  startled  us  to  be  here  told  of 
the  nation  which  “deserved,  assumed,  and  maintained  the  honourable 
name  of  freemen,”  that  “ these  undisciplined  robbers  treated  as  their  natu- 
ral enemies  all  the  subjects  of  the  empire  who  possessed  any  property 
which  they  were  desirous  of  acquiring.”  The  first  campaign  of  Julian, 
which  throws  both  Franks  and  Alemanni  back  across  the  Khine,  but 
grants  the  Salian  Franks,  under  solemn  oath,  their  established  territory 
in  the  Netherlands,  must  be  traced  at  another  time. 


320 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US.” 


we  might  perhaps  venture  to  translate,)  a lighter  weapon  than 
the  Spear  beginning  here  to  quiver  in  the  hand  of  its  chivalry 
— and  Fere-encos  then  passing  swiftly  on  the  tongue  into 
Francos  ; ” — a derivation  not  to  be  adopted,  but  the  idea  of 
the  weapon  most  carefully, — together  with  this  following — 
that  among  the  arms  of  the  ancient  French,  over  and  beside 
the  Launce,  was  the  Battaile-Axe,  which  they  called  Auction , 
and  moreover,  yet  to  this  day,  in  many  Provinces  of  France,  it 
is  termed  an  Action , wherewith  they  served  themselves  in 
warre,  by  throwing  it  a farre  off  at  joyning  with  the  enemy, 
onely  to  discover  the  man  and  to  cleave  his  shield.  Because  this 
Action  was  darted  with  such  violence,  as  it  would  cleave  the 
Shield,  and  eompell  the  Maister  thereof  to  hold  down  his  arm, 
and  being  so  discovered,  as  naked  or  unarmed  ; it  made  wray 
for  the  sooner  surprizing  of  him.  It  seemeth,  that  this 
weapon  was  proper  and  particuler  to  the  French  Souldior,  as 
well  him  on  foote,  as  on  liorsebacke.  For  this  cause  they 
called  it  Franciscus.  Francisca,  securis  oblonga , quam  Fraud 
librabant  in  Ilostes.  For  the  Horseman,  beside  his  shield  and 
Francisca  (Armes  common,  as  wee  have  said,  to  the  Footman), 
had  also  the  Lance,  which  being  broken,  and  serving  to  no 
further  effect,  he  laid  hand  on  his  Francisca,  as  we  learn  the 
use  of  that  wTeapon  in  the  Archbishop  of  Tours,  his  second 
book,  and  twenty-seventh  chapter.” 

33.  It  is  satisfactory  to  find  how  respectfully  these  lessons 
of  the  Archbishop  of  Tours  were  received  by  the  French 
knights  ; and  curious  to  see  the  preferred  use  of  the  Francisca 
by  all  the  best  of  them — down,  not  only  to  Coeur  de  Lion's 
time,  but  even  to  the  day  of  Poitiers.  In  the  last  wrestle  of 
the  battle  at  Poitiers  gate,  “ La,  fit  le  Roy  Jehan  de  sa  main, 
merveilles  d’armes,  et  tenoit  une  hache  de  guerre  dont  bien  se 
deffendoit  et  combattoit, — si  la  quartre  partie  de  ses  gens 
luy  eussent  ressemble,  la  journee  eust  ete  pour  eux.”  Still 
more  notably,  in  the  episode  of  fight  which  Froissart  stops  to 
tell  just  before,  between  the  Sire  de  Verclef,  (on  Severn)  and 
the  Picard  squire  Jean  de  Helennes : the  Englishman,  losing 
his  sword,  dismounts  to  recover  it,  on  which  Helennes  casts 
his  own  at  him  with  such  aim  and  force  “qu’il  acconsuit 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS.  321 

1’Anglois  es  cuisses,  tellement  que  l'espee  entra  dedans  et  la 
cousit  tout  parmi,  jusqu’au  bans.” 

On  this  the  knight  rendering  himself,  the  squire  binds  his 
wound,  and  nurses  him,  staying  fifteen  days  ‘ pour  l’amour  de 
lui  ’ at  Chasteleraut,  while  his  life  was  in  danger  ; and  after- 
wards carrying  him  in  a litter  all  the  way  to  his  own  chastel  in 
Picardy.  His  ransom  however  is  6000  nobles — I suppose 
about  25,000  pounds,  of  our  present  estimate  ; and  you  may 
set  down  for  one  of  the  fatallest  signs  that  the  days  of  chivalry 
are  near  their  darkening,  how  “ devint  celuy  Escuyer,  Cheva- 
lier, pour  le  grand  profit  qn’il  eut  du  Seigneur  de  Verclef.” 

I return  gladly  to  the  dawn  of  chivalry,  when,  every  hour 
and  year,  men  were  becoming  more  gentle  and  more  wise ; 
while,  even  through  their  worst  cruelty  and  error,  native 
qualities  of  noblest  cast  may  be  seen  asserting  themselves  for 
primal  motive,  and  submitting  themselves  for  future  training. 

34.  We  have  hitherto  got  no  farther  in  our  notion  of  a 
Salian  Frank  than  a glimpse  of  his  two  principal  weapons, — 
the  shadow  of  him,  however,  begins  to  shape  itself  to  us  on 
the  mist  of  the  Brocken,  bearing  the  lance  light,  passing  into 
the  javelin,— but  the  axe,  his  woodman’s  weapon,  lieavjr ; — for 
economical  reasons,  in  scarcity  of  iron,  preferablest  of  all 
weapons,  giving  the  fullest  swung  and  weight  of  blow  with 
least  quantity  of  actual  metal,  and  roughest  forging.  Gibbon 
gives  them  also  a ‘ weighty  ’ sword,  suspended  from  a ‘ broad  ’ 
belt : but  Gibbon’s  epithets  are  always  gratis,  and  the  belted 
sword,  whatever  its  measure,  was  probably  for  the  leaders 
only  ; the  belt,  itself  of  gold,  the  distinction  of  the  Homan 
Counts,  and  doubtless  adopted  from  them  by  the  allied  Frank 
leaders,  afterwards  taking  the  Pauline  mythic  meaning  of  the 
girdle  of  Truth — and  so  finally  ; the  chief  mark  of  Belted 
Knighthood. 

35.  The  Shield,  for  all,  wras  round,  wielded  like  a High- 
lander’s target  : — armour,  presumably,  nothing  but  hard- 
tanned  leather,  or  patiently  close  knitted  hemp  ; “ Their  close 
apparel,”  says  Mr.  Gibbon,  “ accurately  expressed  the  figure 
of  their  limbs,”  but  ‘apparel’  is  only  Miltonic-Gibbonian  for 
‘ nobody  knows  what.’  He  is  more  intelligible  of  their  per-* 


822 


“OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US.” 


sons.  “ The  lofty  stature  of  the  Franks,  and  their  blue  eye^ 
denoted  a Germanic  origin  ; the  warlike  barbarians  were 
trained  from  their  earliest  youth  to  run,  to  leap,  to  swim,  to 
dart  the  javelin  and  battle-axe  with  unerring  aim,  to  advance 
without  hesitation  against  a superior  enemy,  and  to  maintain 
either  in  life  or  death,  the  invincible  reputation  of  their  an- 
cestors ” (vi.  95).  For  the  first  time,  in  358,  appalled  by  the 
Emperor  Julian’s  victory  at  Strasburg,  and  besieged  by  him 
upon  the  Meuse,  a body  of  six  hundred  Franks  “ dispensed 
with  the  ancient  law  which  commanded  them  to  conquer  or 
die.”  “Although  they  were  strongly  actuated  by  the  allure- 
ments of  rapine,  they  professed  a disinterested  love  of  war, 
which  they  considered  as  the  supreme  honour  and  felicity  of 
human  nature  ; and  their  minds  and  bodies  were  so  hardened 
by  perpetual  action  that,  according  to  the  lively  expression  of 
an  orator,  the  snows  of  winter  were  as  pleasant  to  them  as  thr 
flowers  of  spring  ” (iii.  220). 

36.  These  mental  and  bodily  virtues,  or  indurations,  were 
probably  universal  in  the  military  rank  of  the  nation  : but  we 
learn  presently,  with  surprise,  of  so  remarkably  * free  ’ a 
people,  that  nobody  but  the  King  and  royal  family  might  wear 
their  hair  to  their  own  liking.  The  kings  wore  theirs  in  flow- 
ing ringlets  on  the  back  and  shoulders, — the  Queens,  in 
tresses  rippling  to  their  feet, — but  all  the  rest  of  the  nation 
“ were  obliged,  either  by  law  or  custom,  to  shave  the  hinder 
part  of  their  head,  to  comb  their  short  hair  over  their  fore- 
head, and  to  content  themselves  with  the  ornament  of  two 
small  whiskers.” 

37.  Moustaches, — Mr.  Gibbon  means,  I imagine  : and  I 
take  leave  also  to  suppose  that  the  nobles,  and  noble  ladies, 
might  wear  such  tress  and  ringlet  as  became  them.  But 
again,  we  receive  unexpectedly  embarrassing  light  on  the 
democratic  institutions  of  the  Franks,  in  being  told  that  “ the 
various  trades,  the  labours  of  agriculture,  and  the  arts  of 
hunting  and  fishing,  were  exercised  by  servile  hands  for  the 
emolument  of  the  Sovereign.” 

‘ Servile  * and  * Emolument,’  however,  though  at  first  they 
l&ound  very  dreadful  and  very  wrong,  are  only  Miltonic-Gil> 


III. — Amiens. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


323 


bonian  expressions  of  the  general  fact  that  the  Frankish 
Kings  had  ploughmen  in  their  fields,  employed  weavers  and 
smiths  to  make  their  robes  and  swords,  hunted  with  hunts- 
men, hawked  with  falconers,  and  were  in  other  respects 
tyrannical  to  the  ordinary  extent  that  an  English  Master  of 
Hounds  may  be.  “The  mansion  of  the  long-haired  Kings 
was  surrounded  with  convenient  yards  and  stables  for  poultry 
and  cattle ; the  garden  was  planted  with  useful  vegetables  ; 
the  magazines  filled  with  corn  and  wine  either  for  sale  or  con- 
sumption ; and  the  whole  administration  conducted  by  the 
strictest  rules  of  private  economy.” 

38.  I have  collected  these  imperfect,  and  not  always  ex- 
tremely consistent,  notices  of  the  aspect  and  temper  of  the 
Franks  out  of  Mr.  Gibbon’s  casual  references  to  them  during 
a period  of  more  than  two  centuries, — and  the  last  passage 
quoted,  which  he  accompanies  with  the  statement  that  “ one 
hundred  and  sixty  of  these  rural  palaces  were  scattered  through 
the  provinces  of  their  kingdom,”  without  telling  us  what  king- 
dom, or  at  what  period,  must  I think  be  held  descriptive  of 
the  general  manner  and  system  of  their  monarchy  after  the 
victories  of  Clovis.  But,  from  the  first  hour  you  hear  of  him, 
the  Frank,  closely  considered,  is  always  an  extremely  ingen- 
ious, well  meaning,  and  industrious  personage  ; — if  eagerly 
acquisitive,  also  intelligently  conservative  and  constructive  ; 
an  element  of  order  and  crystalline  edification,  which  is  to 
consummate  itself  one  day,  in  the  aisles  of  Amiens  ; and  things 
generally  insuperable  and  impregnable,  if  the  inhabitants  of 
them  had  been  as  sound-hearted  as  their  builders,  for  many  a 
day  beyond. 

39.  But  for  the  present,  we  must  retrace  our  ground  a lit- 
tle ; for  indeed  I have  lately  observed  with  compunction,  in 
re-reading  some  of  my  books  for  revised  issue,  that  if  ever  I 
promise,  in  one  number  or  chapter,  careful  consideration  of 
any  particular  point  in  the  next,  the  next  never  does  touch 
upon  the  promised  point  at  all,  but  is  sure  to  fix  itself  pas- 
sionately on  some  antithetic,  antipathic,  or  antipodic,  point 
in  the  opposite  hemisphere.  This  manner  of  conducting  a 
treatise  I find  indeed  extremely  conducive  to  impartiality 


324 


“OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US.** 


and  largeness  of  view  ; but  can  conceive  it  to  be — to  the  gen* 
eral  reader — not  only  disappointing,  (if  indeed  I may  flatter 
myself  that  I ever  interest  enough  to  disappoint),  but  even 
liable  to  confirm  in  his  mind  some  of  the  fallacious  and  ex- 
tremely absurd  insinuations  of  adverse  critics  respecting  my 
inconsistency,  vacillation,  and  liability  to  be  affected  by  changes 
of  the  weather  in  my  principles  or  opinions.  I purpose,  there- 
fore, in  these  historical  sketches,  at  least  to  watch,  and  I hope 
partly  to  correct  myself  in  this  fault  of  promise  breaking,  and 
at  whatever  sacrifice  of  my  variously  fluent  or  re-fluent  hu- 
mour, to  tell  in  each  successive  chapter  in  some  measure  what 
the  reader  justifiably  expects  to  be  told. 

40.  I left,  merely  glanced  at,  i:i  my  opening  chapter,  the 
story  of  the  vase  of  Soissons.  It  may  be  found  (and  it  is  very 
nearly  the  only  thing  that  is  to  be  found  respecting  the  per- 
sonal life  or  character  of  the  first  Louis)  in  every  cheap  popu- 
lar history  of  France  ; with  cheap  popular  moralities  engrafted 
thereon.  Had  I time  to  trace  it  to  its  first  sources,  perhaps 
it  might  take  another  aspect.  But  I give  it  as  you  may  any- 
where find  it — asking  you  only  to  consider  whether  even  as  so 
read — it  may  not  properly  bear  a somewhat  different  moral. 

41.  The  story  is,  then,  that  after  the  battle  of  Soissons,  in 
the  division  of  Roman,  or  Gallic  spoil,  the  king  wished  to  have 
a beautifully  wrought  silver  vase  for — ‘ himself,  I was  going 
to  write — and  in  my  last  chapter  did  mistakenly  infer  that  he 
wanted  it  for  his  better  self, — his  Queen.  But  he  wanted  it 
for  neither  ; — it  was  restore  to  St.  Be  my,  that  it  might  remain 
among  the  consecrated  treasures  of  Rheims.  That  is  the  first 
point  on  which  the  popular  histories  do  not  insist,  and  which 
one  of  his  warriors  claiming  equal  division  of  treasure,  chose 
also  to  ignore.  The  vase  was  asked  by  the  King  in  addition 
to  his  own  portion,  and  the  Frank  knights,  while  they  rendered 
true  obedience  to  their  king  as  a leader,  had  not  the  smallest 
notion  of  allowing  him  what  more  recent  kings  call  ‘ Royalties  * 
— taxes  on  everything  they  touch.  And  one  of  these  Frank 
knights  or  Counts — a little  franker  than  the  rest — and  as  in- 
credulous of  St.  Remy’s  saintsliip  as  a Protestant  Bishop,  or 
Positivist  Philosopher — took  upon  him  to  dispute  the  King's 


THh  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


325 


and  ilie  Church’s  claim,  in  the  manner,  suppose,  of  a Liberal 
opposition  in  the  House  of  Commons  ; and  disputed  it  with 
such  security  of  support  by  the  public  opinion  of  the  fifth 
century,  that — the  king  persisting  in  his  request — the  fearless 
soldier  dashed  the  vase  to  pieces  with  his  war-axe,  exclaiming 
“ Thou  shalt  have  no  more  than  thy  portion  by  lot.” 

42.  It  is  the  first  clear  assertion  of  French  £ Liberte,  Fra- 
ternite  and  Egalite,’  supported,  then,  as  now,  by  the  destruc- 
tion, which  is  the  only  possible  active  operation  of  “ free  ” 
personages,  on  the  art  they  cannot  produce. 

The  king  did  not  continue  the  quarrel.  Cowards  will  think 
that  he  paused  in  cowardice,  and  malicious  persons,  that  he 
paused  in  malignity.  He  did  pause  in  anger  assuredly  ; but 
biding  its  time,  which  the  anger  of  a strong  man  always  can, 
and  burn  hotter  for  the  waiting,  which  is  one  of  the  chief  rea- 
sons for  Christians  being  told  not  to  let  the  sun  go  down  upon 
it.  Precept  which  Christians  now-a-days  are  perfectly  ready  to 
obey,  if  it  is  somebody  else  who  has  been  injured ; and  indeed, 
the  difficulty  in  such  cases  is  usually  to  get  them  to  think  of 
the  injury  even  while  the  Sun  rises  on  their  wrath.* 

43.  The  sequel  is  very  shocking  indeed — to  modern  sensi- 
bility. I give  it  in  the,  if  not  polished,  at  least  delicately  var- 
nished, language  of  the  Pictorial  History. 

“ About  a year  afterwards,  on  reviewing  his  troops,  Jhe  went 
to  the  man  who  had  struck  the  vase,  and  examining  his  arms , 
complained  that  they  were  in  bad  condition ! ” (Italics  mine) 
£<  and  threw  them  ” (What  ? shield  and  sword  ?)  on  the  ground. 
The  soldier  stooped  to  recover  them  ; and  at  that  moment 
the  King  struck  him  on  the  head  with  his  battle-axe,  crying 
‘ Thus  didst  thou  to  the  vase  at  Soissons.’  ” The  Moral  mod- 
ern historian  proceeds  to  reflect  that  “ this — as  an  evidence  of 
the  condition  of  the  Franks,  and  of  the  ties  by  which  they 
were  united,  gives  but  the  idea  of  a band  of  Robbers  and  their 
chief.”  Which  is,  indeed,  so  far  as  I can  myself  look  into 
and  decipher  the  nature  of  things,  the  Primary  idea  to  be  en- 
tertained respecting  most  of  the  kingly  and  military  organiza- 
tions in  this  world,  down  to  our  own  day  ; and,  (unless  per* 
* Read  Mr,  Plimsoll’s  article  on  coal  mines  for  instance. 


32G 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US." 


chance  it  be  the  Afghans  and  Zulus  who  are  stealing  our  lands 
in  England — instead  of  we  theirs,  in  their  several  countries.) 
But  concerning  the  manner * of  this  piece  of  military  execution, 
I must  for  the  present  leave  the  reader  to  consider  with  him- 
self, whether  it  indeed  be  les3  Kingly,  or  more  savage,  to 
strike  an  uncivil  soldier  on  the  head  with  one’s  own  battle- 
axe,  than,  for  instance,  to  strike  a person  like  Sir  Thomas 
More  on  the  neck  with  an  executioner’s, — using  for  the  mech- 
anism, and  as  it  were  guillotine  bar  and  rope  to  the  blow — 
the  manageable  forms  of  National  Law,  and  the  gracefully 
twined  intervention  of  a polite  group  of  noblemen  and 
bishops. 

44  Far  darker  things  have  to  be  told  of  him  than  this,  as 
his  proud  life  draws  towards  the  close, — things  which,  if  any 
of  us  could  see  clear  through  darkness,  you  should  be  told  in 
all  the  truth  of  them.  But  we  never  can  know  the  truth  of 
Sin  ; for  its  nature  is  to  deceive  alike  on  the  one  side  the 
Sinner,  on  the  other  the  Judge.  Diabolic — betraying  whether 
we  yield  to  it,  or  condemn  : Here  is  Gibbon’s  sneer — if  you 
care  for  it ; but  I gather  first  from  the  confused  paragraphs 
which  conduct  to  it,  the  sentences  of  praise,  less  niggard  than 
the  Sage  of  Lausanne  usually  grants  to  any  hero  who  has 
confessed  the  influence  of  Christianity. 

45.  “ Clovis,  when  he  was  no  more  than  fifteen  years  of  age, 
succeeded,  by  his  father’s  death,  to  the  command  of  the 
Salian  tribe.  The  narrow  limits  of  his  kingdom  were  confined 
to  the  island  of  the  Batoerans,  with  the  ancient  dioceses  of 
Tournay  and  Arras  ; and  at  the  baptism  of  Clovis,  the  number 
of  his  warriors  could  not  exceed  five  thousand.  The  kindred 
tribes  of  the  Franks  who  had  seated  themselves  along  the 
Scheldt,  the  Meuse,  the  Moselle,  and  the  Rhine,  were  gov- 
erned by  their  independent  kings,  of  the  Merovingian  race, 
the  equals,  the  allies,  and  sometimes  the  enemies  of  the  Salic 
Prince.  Y7hen  he  first  took  the  field  he  had  neither  gold  nor 
silver  in  his  coffers,  nor  wine  and  corn  in  his  magazines  ; but 
he  imitated  the  example  of  Csesar,  who  in  the  same  country 
had  acquired  wealth  by  the  sword,  and  purchased  soldiers 
with  the  fruits  of  conquest.  The  untamed  spirit  of  tli9  Bar- 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


327 


barians  was  tauglit  to  acknowledge  the  advantages  of  regular 
discipline.  At  the  annual  review  of  the  month  of  March, 
their  arms  were  diligently  inspected  ; and  when  they  traversed 
a peaceful  territory  they  were  prohibited  from  touching  a 
blade  of  grass.  The  justice  of  Clovis  was  inexorable  ; and  his 
careless  or  disobedient  soldiers  were  punished  with  instant 
death.  It  would  be  superfluous  to  praise  the  valour  of  a 
Frank  ; but  the  valour  of  Clovis  was  directed  by  cool  and  con- 
summate prudence.  In  all  his  transactions  with  mankind  he 
calculated  the  weight  of  interest,  of  passion,  and  of  opinion  ; 
and  his  measures  were  sometimes  adapted  to  the  sanguinary 
manners  of  the  Germans,  and  sometimes  moderated  by  the 
milder  genius  of  Rome,  and  Christianity. 

46.  “ But  the  savage  conqueror  of  Gaul  was  incapable  of 
examining  the  proofs  of  a religion,  which  depends  on  the 
laborious  investigation  of  historic  evidence,  and  speculative 
theology.  He  was  still  more  incapable  of  feeling  the  mild  in- 
fluence of  the  Gospel,  which  persuades  and  purifies  the  heart 
of  a genuine  convert.  His  ambitious  reign  was  a perpetual 
violation  of  moral  and  Christian  duties : his  hands  were 
stained  with  blood,  in  peace  as  well  as  in  war  ; and,  as  soon 
as  Clovis  had  dismissed  a synod  of  the  Gallican  Church,  he 
calmly  assassinated  all  the  princes  of  the  Merovingian  race/' 

47.  It  is  too  true  ; but  rhetorically  put,  in  the  first  place — - 
for  we  ought  to  be  told  how  many  ‘ all  ’ the  princes  were  ; — 
in  the  second  place,  we  must  note  that,  supposing  Clovis  had 
in  any  degree  “ searched  the  Scriptures  ” as  presented  to  the 
Western  world  by  St.  Jerome,  he  was  likely,  as  a soldier-king, 
to  have  thought  more  of  the  mission  of  Joshua*  and  Jehu 
than  of  the  patience  of  Christ,  whose  sufferings  he  thought 

* The  likeness  was  afterwards  taken  up  by  legend,  and  the  walls  of 
Angouleme,  after  the  battle  of  Poitiers,  are  said  to  have  fallen  at  the 
sound  of  the  trumpets  of  Clovis.  “A  miracle,”  says  Gibbon,  “which 
may  be  reduced  to  the  supposition  that  some  clerical  engineer  had  se- 
cretly undermined  the  foundations  of  the  rampart.”  I cannot  too  often 
warn  my  honest  readers  against  the  modern  habit  of  “reducing”  all 
history  whatever  to  * the  supposition  that 5 . . . etc.,  etc.  The  legend  is 
of  course  the  natural  and  easy  expansion  of  a metaphor. 


328 


“ OUIl  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US. 


rather  of  avenging  than  imitating  : and  the  question  whether 
the  other  Kings  of  the  Franks  should  either  succeed  him,  or 
in  envy  of  his  enlarged  kingdom,  attack  and  dethrone,  was 
easily  in  his  mind  convertible  from  a personal  danger  into  the 
chance  of  the  return  of  the  whole  nation  to  idolatry.  And,  in 
the  last  place,  his  faith  in  the  Divine  protection  of  his  cause 
had  been  shaken  by  his  defeat  before  Arles  by  the  Ostro- 
goths ; and  the  Frank  leopard  had  not  so  wholly  changed  his 
spots  as  to  surrender  to  an  enemy  the  opportunity  of  a first 
spring. 

48.  Finally,  and  beyond  all  these  personal  questions,  the 
forms  of  cruelty  and  subtlety — the  former,  observe,  arising 
much  out  of  a scorn  of  pain  which  was  a condition  of  honour 
in  their  women  as  well  as  men,  are  in  these  savage  races  all 
founded  on  their  love  of  glory  in  war,  which  can  only  be  un- 
derstood by  comparing  what  remains  of  the  same  temper  in 
the  higher  castes  of  the  North  American  Indians  ; and,  before 
tracing  in  final  clearness  the  actual  events  of  the  reign  of 
Clovis  to  their  end,  the  reader  will  do  well  to  learn  this  list  of 
the  personages  of  the  great  Drama,  taking  to  heart  the  mean- 
ing of  the  name  of  each,  both  in  its  probable  effect  on  the 
mind  of  its  bearer,  and  in  its  fateful  expression  of  the  course 
of  their  acts,  and  the  consequences  of  it  to  future  genera- 
tions. 

1.  Clovis.  Frank  form,  Hluodoveh.  c Glorious  Holiness,’  or 

consecration.  Latin  Chlodovisus,  when  baptized  by  St. 
Remy,  softening  afterwards  through  the  centuries  into 
Lhodovisus,  Ludovicus,  Louis. 

2.  Albofleda.  ‘ White  household  fairy  ’ ? His  youngest  sis. 

ter ; married  Theodorie  (Theutreich,  ‘ People’s  ruler  ’), 
the  great  King  of  the  Ostrogoths. 

3.  Clotilde.  Hlod-hilda.  £ Glorious  Battle-maid.’  His  wife. 

* Hilda  ’ first  meaning  Battle,  pure  ; and  then  passing 
into  Queen  or  Maid  of  Battle.  Christianized  to  Ste 
Clotilde  in  France,  and  Ste  Hilda  of  Whitby  cliff. 

3.  Clotilde.  His  only  daughter.  Died  for  the  Catholic  faith, 
under  Arian  persecution. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


% Childebert.  His  eldest  son  by  Clotilde,  the  first  Frank 
King  in  Paris.  £ Battle  Splendour,’  softening  intoHil- 
debert,  and  then  Hildebrandt,  as  in  the  Nibelung. 

5.  Chlodomir.  £ Glorious  Fame.’  His  second  son  by  Clo- 
tilde. 

6 Clotaire.  His  youngest  son  by  Clotilde  ; virtually  the  de- 
stroyer of  his  father’s  house.  ‘ Glorious  Warrior.’ 

7.  Chlodowald.  Youngest  son  of  Chlodomir.  * Glorious 
Power,’  afterwards  ‘ St.  Cloud.’ 

49.  I will  now  follow  straight,  through  their  light  and 
shadow,  the  course  of  Clovis’  reign  and  deeds. 

a.d.  481.  Crowned,  when  he  was  only  fifteen.  Five  years 
afterwards,  he  challenges,  “ in  the  spirit,  and  almost  in  the 
language  of  chivalry,”  the  Homan  governor  Syagrius,  hold- 
ing the  district  of  Rheims  and  Soissons.  “ Campum  sibi 
piveparari  jussit — he  commanded  his  antagonist  to  prepare 
him  a battle  field  ” — see  Gibbon’s  note  and  reference,  chap, 
xxxviii.  (6,297).  The  Benedictine  abbey  of  Nogent  was  after- 
wards built  on  the  field,  marked  by  a circle  of  Pagan  sepul- 
chres. ‘‘Clovis  bestowed  the  adjacent  lands  of  Leuilly  and 
Coucy  on  the  church  of  Rheims.”  * 

a.d.  485.  The  Battle  of  Soissons.  Not  dated  by  Gibbon  : 
the  subsequent  death  of  Syagrius  at  the  court  of  (the  younger) 
Alaric,  was  in  486 — take  485  for  the  battle. 

50.  a.d.  493.  I cannot  find  any  account  of  the  relations  be- 
tween Clovis  and  the  King  of  Burgundy,  the  uncle  of  Clotilde, 
which  preceded  his  betrothal  to  the  orphan  princess.  Her 
uncle,  according  to  the  common  history,  had  killed  both  her 
father  and  mother,  and  compelled  her  sister  to  take  the  veil — 
motives  none  assigned,  nor  authorities.  Clotilde  herself  was 
pursued  on  her  way  to  France, f and  the  litter  in  which  she 

* When  ? — for  this  tradition,  as  well  as  that  of  the  vase,  points  to  a 
friendship  between  Clovis  and  St.  Remy,  and  a singular  respect  on  the 
King’s  side  for  the  Christians  of  Gaul,  though  he  was  not  yet  himself 
converted. 

f It  is  a curious  proof  of  the  want  in  vulgar  historians  of-  the  slightest 
sense  of  the  vital  interest  of  anything  they  tell,  that  neither  in  Gibbon, 
nor  in  Messrs.  Bussey  and  Gaspey,  nor  in  the  elaborate  ‘ Histoire  de$ 


330 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US” 


travelled  captured,  with  part  of  her  marriage  portion.  But 
the  princess  herself  mounted  on  horseback,  and  rode,  with 
part  of  her  escort,  forward  into  France,  “ ordering  her  attend' 
ants  to  set  fire  to  everything  that  pertained  to  her  uncle  and 
his  subjects  which  they  might  meet  with  on  the  way.” 

51.  The  fact  is  not  chronicled,  usually,  among  the  sayings 
or  doings  of  the  Saints  : but  the  punishment  of  Kings  by  de- 
stroying the  property  of  their  subjects,  is  too  well  recognized 
a method  of  modern  Christian  warfare  to  allow  our  indigna- 
tion to  burn  hot  against  Clotilde  ; driven,  as  she  was,  hard  by 
grief  and  wrath.  The  years  of  her  youth  are  not  counted  to 
us  ; Clovis  was  already  twenty-seven,  and  for  three  years  main- 
tained the  faith  of  his  ancestral  religion  against  all  the  influ- 
ence of  his  queen. 

52.  a.d.  496.  I did  not  in  the  opening  chapter  attach  nearly 

Villes  de  France,’  can  I find,  with  the  best  research  my  winter's  morn- 
ing allows,  what  city  was  at  this  time  the  capital  of  Burgundy,  or  at 
least  in  which  of  its  four  nominal  capitals, — Dijon,  Besancon,  Geneva, 
and  Vienne, — Clotilde  was  brought  up.  The  evidence  seems  to  me  in 
favour  of  Vienne — (called  always  by  Messrs.  B.  and  G.,  * Vienna,’  with 
what  effect  on  the  minds  of  their  dimly  geographical  readers  I cannot 
say) — the  rather  that  Clotilde’s  mother  is  said  to  have  been  “thrown 
into  the  Rhone  with  a stone  round  her  neck.”  The  author  of  the  intro- 
duction to  ‘ Bourgogne  ’ in  the  ‘ Histoire  des  Villes  ’ is  so  eager  to  get 
his  little  spiteful  snarl  at  anything  like  religion  anywhere,  that  he  en- 
tirely forgets  the  existence  of  the  first  queen  of  France,— never  names 
her,  nor,  as  such,  the  place  of  her  birth, — but  contributes  only  to  the 
knowledge  of  the  young  student  this  beneficial  quota,  that  Gondeband, 
“ plus  politique  quo  guerrier,  trouva  au  milieu  de  ses  controverses 
th  ologiques  avec  Avitus,  eveque  de  Vienne , le  temps  de  faire  mourir 
ses  trois  freres  et  de  recueillir  leur  heritage.  ” 

The  one  broad  fact  which  my  own  readers  will  find  it  well  to  remem- 
ber is  that  Burgundy,  at  this  time,  by  whatever  king  or  victor  tribe  its 
inhabitants  may  be  subdued,  does  practically  include  the  whole  of 
French  Switzerland,  and  even  of  the  German,  as  far  east  as  Vindonissa : 
— the  Peuss,  from  Vindonissa  through  Lucerne  to  the  St.  Gotliard  being 
its  effective  eastern  boundary  ; that  westward— it  meant  all  Jura,  and 
the  plains  of  the  Saone  ; and  southward,  included  all  Savoy  and  Dau* 
phine.  According  to  the  author  of  ‘ La  Suisse  Kistorique  ’ Clotilde  was 
first  addressed  by  Clovis’s  herald  disguised  as  a beggar,  while  she  distrib- 
uted alms  at  the  gate  of  St.  Pierre  at  Geneva  ; and  her  departure  and 
pursued  flight  into  France  were  from  Dijon. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


331 


enough  importance  to  the  battle  of  Tolbiac,  thinking  of  it  as 
merely  compelling  the  Alemanni  to  recross  the  Rhine,  and 
establishing  the  Frank  power  on  its  western  bank.  But  in- 
finitely wider  results  are  indicated  in  the  short  sentence  with 
which  Gibbon  closes  his  account  of  the  battle.  '‘After  the 
conquest  of  the  western  provinces,  the  Franks  alone  retained 
their  ancient  possessions  beyond  the  Rhine.  They  gradually 
subdued  and  civilized  the  exhausted  countries  as  far  as  the 
Elbe  and  the  mountains  of  Bohemia  ; and  the  peace  of  Europe 
was  secured  by  the  obedience  of  Germany.” 

53.  For,  in  the  south,  Theodor ic  had  already  “ sheathed  the 
sword  in  the  pride  of  victory  and  the  vigour  of  his  age — and 
his  farther  reign  of  three  and  thirty  years  was  consecrated  to 
the  duties  of  civil  government.”  Even  when  his  son-in-law, 
Alaric,  fell  by  Clovis’  hand  in  the  battle  of  Poitiers,  Theodoric 
was  content  to  check  the  Frank  power  at  Arles,  without  pur- 
suing his  success,  and  to  protect  his  infant  grandchild,  correct- 
ing at  the  same  time  some  abuses  in  the  civil  government  of 
Spain.  So  that  the  healing  sovereignty  of  the  great  Goth 
was  established  from  Sicily  to  the  Danube — and  from  Sirmium 
to  the  Atlantic  ocean. 

54.  Thus,  then,  at  the  close  of  the  fifth  century,  you  have 
Europe  divided  simply  by  her  watershed  ; and  two  Christian 
kings  reigning,  with  entirely  beneficent  and  healthy  power — 
one  in  the  north — one  in  the  south — the  mightiest  and  wor- 
thiest of  them  married  to  the  other’s  youngest  sister  : a saint 
queen  in  the  north — and  a devoted  and  earnest  Catholic 
woman,  queen  mother  in  the  south.  It  is  a conjunction  of 
things  memorable  enough  in  the  Earth’s  history, — much  to 
be  thought  of,  oh  fast  whirling  reader,  if  ever,  out  of  the 
crowd  of  pent  up  cattle  driven  across  Rhine,  or  Adige,  you 
can  extricate  yourself  for  an  hour,  to  walk  peacefully  out  of 
the  south  gate  of  Cologne,  or  across  Fra  Giocondo’s  bridge 
at  Yerona — and  so  pausing  look  through  the  clear  air  across 
the  battlefield  of  Tolbiac  to  the  blue  Drachenfels,  or  across 
the  plain  of  St.  Ambrogio  to  the  mountains  of  Garda.  For 
there  were  fought — if  you  will  think  closely — the  two  victor- 
battles  of  the  Christian  world.  Constantine’s  only  gave 


332 


“ OUR  FATHERS  RAVE  TOLD  US” 


changed  form  and  dying  colour  to  the  falling  wails  of  Rome  ; 
but  the  Frank  and  Gothic  races,  thus  conquering  and  thus 
ruled,  founded  the  arts  and  established  the  laws  which  gave 
to  all  future  Europe  her  joy,  and  her  virtue.  And  it  is  lovely 
to  see  how,  even  thus  early,  the  Feudal  chivalry  depended  for 
its  life  on  the  nobleness  of  its  womanhood.  There  was  no 
vision  seen,  or  alleged,  at  Tolbiac.  The  King  prayed  simply 
to  the  God  of  Clotilde.  On  the  morning  of  the  battle  of 
Verona,  Theodoric  visited  the  tent  of  his  mother  and  his 
sister,  “ and  requested  that  on  the  most  illustrious  festival  of 
his  life,  they  would  adorn  him  with  the  rich  garments  which 
they  had  worked  with  their  own  hands.” 

55.  But  over  Clovis,  there  was  extended  yet  another  influ- 
ence— greater  than  his  queen’s.  When  his  kingdom  w*as  first 
extended  to  the  Loire,  the  shepherdess  of  Nanterre  was 
already  aged, — no  torcli-bearing  maid  of  battle,  like  Clotilde, 
no  knightly  leader  of  deliverance  like  Jeanne,  but  grey  in 
meekness  of  wisdom,  and  now  “ filling  more  and  more  with 
crystal  light.”  Clovis’s  father  had  known  her  ; he  himself 
made  her  his  friend,  and  when  he  left  Paris  on  the  campaign 
of  Poitiers,  vowed  that  if  victorious,  he  would  build  a Chris- 
tian church  on  the  hills  of  Seine.  He  returned  in  victory  and 
with  St.  Genevieve  at  his  side,  stood  on  the  site  of  the  ruined 
Roman  Thermse,  just  above  the  “ Isle  ” of  Paris,  to  fulfil  his 
vow  : and  to  design  the  limits  of  the  foundations  of  the  first 
metropolitan  church  of  Frankish  Christendom. 

The  King  “ gave  his  battle-axe  the  swing,”  and  tossed  it 
with  his  full  force. 

Measuring  with  its  flight  also,  the  place  of  his  own  grave, 
and  of  Clotilde’s,  and  St.  Genevieve’s. 

There  they  rested,  and  rest, — in  soul, — together.  “La 
Colline  tout  entiere  porte  encore  le  nom  de  la  patronne  de 
Paris  une  petite  rue  obscure  a garde  celui  du  Roi  Conquerant.” 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS . 


333 


CHAPTER  IK. 

TH  E LION  TAMER. 

1.  It  has  been  often  of  late  announced  as  a new  discovery, 
that  man  is  a creature  of  circumstances  ; and  the  fact  has  been 
pressed  upon  our  notice,  in  the  hope,  which  appears  to  some 
people  so  pleasing,  of  being  able  at  last  to  resolve  into  a suc- 
cession of  splashes  in  mud,  or  whirlwinds  in  air,  the  circum- 
stances answerable  for  his  creation.  Rut  the  more  important 
fact,  that  his  nature  is  not  levelled,  like  a mosquito’s,  to  the 
mists  of  a marsh,  nor  reduced,  like  a mole’s,  beneath  the 
Grumblings  of  a burrow  ; but  has  been  endowed  with  sense  to 
discern,  and  instinct  to  adopt,  the  conditions  which  will  make 
of  it  the  best  that  can  be,  is  very  necessarily  ignored  by  phi- 
losophers who  propose,  as  a beautiful  fulfilment  of  human  des- 
tinies, a life  entertained  by  scientific  gossip,  in  a cellar  lighted 
by  electric  sparks,  warmed  by  tubular  inflation,  drained  by 
buried  rivers,  and  fed,  by  the  ministry  of  less  learned  and 
better  provisioned  races,  with  extract  of  beef,  and  potted 
crocodile. 

2.  From  these  chemically  analytic  conceptions  of  a Paradise 
in  catacombs,  undisturbed  in  its  alkaline  or  acid  virtues  by 
the  dread  of  Deity,  or  hope  of  futurity,  I know  not  how  far 
the  modern  reader  may  willingly  withdraw  himself  for  a 
little  time,  to  hear  of  men  who,  in  their  darkest  and  most 
foolish  day,  sought  by  their  labour  to  make  the  desert  as  the 
garden  of  the  Lord,  and  by  their  love  to  become  worthy  of 
permission  to  live  with  Him  for  ever.  It  has  nevertheless  been 
only  by  such  toil,  and  in  such  hope,  that,  hitherto,  the  happi- 
ness, skill,  or  virtue  of  man  have  been  possible  : and  even  on 
the  verge  of  the  new  dispensation,  and  promised  Canaan,  rich 
in  beatitudes  of  iron,  steam,  and  fire,  there  are  some  of  us, 
here  and  there,  who  may  pause  in  filial  piety  to  look  back 
towards  that  wilderness  of  Sinai  in  which  their  fathers  wor- 
shipped and  died. 


334 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US.” 


3.  Admitting  then,  for  the  moment,  that  the  main  streets  of 
Manchester,  the  district  immediately  surrounding  the  Bank  in 
London,  and  the  Bourse  and  Boulevards  of  Paris,  are  already 
part  of  the  future  kingdom  of  Heaven,  when  Earth  shall  be 
all  Bourse  and  Boulevard, — the  world  of  which  our  fathers 
tell  us  was  divided  to  them,  as  you  already  know,  partly  by 
climates,  partly  by  races,  partly  by  times  ; and  the  4 circum- 
stances ’ under  which  a man’s  soul  was  given  to  him,  had  to  be 
considered  under  these  three  heads : — In  what  climate  is  he  ? 
Of  what  race  ? At  what  time  ? 

He  can  only  be  what  these  conditions  permit.  With  appeal 
to  these,  he  is  to  be  heard ; — understood,  if  it  may  be  ; — 
judged,  by  our  love,  first — by  our  pity,  if  he  need  it — by  our 
humility,  finally  and  always. 

4.  To  this  end,  it  is  needful  evidently  that  we  should  have 
truthful  maps  of  the  world  to  begin  with,  and  truthful  maps 
of  our  own  hearts  to  end  with ; neither  of  these  maps  being 
easily  drawn  at  any  time,  and  perhaps  least  of  all  now — when 
the  use  of  a map  is  chiefly  to  exhibit  hotels  and  railroads  ; and 
humility  is  held  the  disagreeblest  and  meanest  of  the  Seven 
mortal  Sins. 

5.  Thus,  in  the  beginning  of  Sir  Edward  Creasy’s  History 
of  England,  you  find  a map  purporting  to  exhibit  the  posses- 
sions of  the  British  Nation — illustrating  the  extremely  wise 
and  courteous  behaviour  of  Mr.  Fox  to  a Frenchman  of  Napo- 
leon’s suite,  in  “ advancing  to  a terrestrial  globe  of  unusual 
magnitude  and  distinctness,  spreading  his  arms  round  it,  over 
both  the  oceans  and  both  the  Indies,”  and  observing,  in  this 
impressive  attitude,  that  “ while  Englishmen  live,  they  over- 
spread the  whole  world,  and  clasp  it  in  the  circle  of  their 
power.  ” 

6.  Fired  by  Mr.  Fox’s  enthusiasm,  the — otherwise  seldom 
fiery — Sir  Edward,  proceeds  to  tell  us  that  “ our  island  home 
is  the  favourite  domicile  of  freedom,  empire  and  glory,”  with- 
out troubling  himself,  or  his  readers,  to  consider  how  long  the 
nations  over  whom  our  freedom  is  imperious,  and  in  whose 
shame  is  our  glory,  may  be  satisfied  in  that  arrangement  of 
the  globe  and  its  affairs  ; or  may  be,  even  at  present  convinced 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


335 


cf  their  degraded  position  in  it  by  his  method  of  its  deline- 
ation. 

For,  the  map  being  drawn  on  Mercator’s  projection,  repre- 
sents therefore  the  British  dominions  in  North  America  as 
twice  the  size  of  the  States,  and  considerably  larger  than  all 
South  America  put  together  : while  the  brilliant  crimson  with 
which  all  our  landed  property  is  coloured  cannot  but  impress 
the  innocent  reader  with  the  idea  of  a universal  flush  of  free- 
dom and  glory  throughout  all  those  acres  and  latitudes.  So 
that  he  is  scarcely  likely  to  cavil  at  results  so  marvellous  by 
inquiring  into  the  nature  and  completeness  of  our  government 
at  any  particular  place, — for  instance  in  Ireland,  in  the  Heb- 
rides, or  at  the  (Jape. 

7.  In  the  closing  chapter  of  the  first  volume  of  4 The  Laws 
of  Fesole  ’ I have  laid  down  the  mathematical  principles  of 
rightly  drawing  maps  ; — principles  which  for  many  reasons  it 
is  well  that  my  young  readers  should  leam  ; the  fundamental 
one  being  that  you  cannot  flatten  the  skin  of  an  orange  with- 
out splitting  it,  and  must  not,  if  you  draw  countries  on  the 
unsplit  skin,  stretch  them  afterwards  to  fill  the  gaps. 

The  British  pride  of  wealth  which  does  not  deny  itself  the 
magnificent  convenience  of  penny  Walter  Scotts  and  penny 
Shakespeares,  may  assuredly,  in  its  future  greatness,  possess 
itself  also  of  penny  universes,  conveniently  spinnable  on  their 
axes.  I shall  therefore  assume  that  my  readers  can  look  at  a 
round  globe,  while  I am  talking  of  the  world  ; and  at  a prop- 
erly reduced  drawing  of  its  surfaces,  when  I am  talking  of  a 
country. 

8.  Which,  if  my  reader  can  at  present  do— -or  at  least  refer 
to  a fairly  drawn  double-circle  map  of  the  globe  with  converg- 
ing meridians— I will  pray  him  next  to  observe,  that,  although 
the  old  division  of  the  world  into  four  quarters  is  now  nearly 
effaced  by  emigration  and  Atlantic  cable,  yet  the  great  his- 
toric question  about  the  globe  is  not  how  it  is  divided,  here  and 
there,  by  ins  and  outs  of  land  or  sea  ; but  how  it  is  divided 
into  zones  all  round,  by  irresistible  law's  of  light  and  air.  It  is 
often  a matter  of  very  minor  interest  to  know  wdiether  a man 
is  an  American  or  African,  a European  or  an  Asiatic.  But  it 


336 


“OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US” 


is  a matter  of  extreme  ancl  final  interest  to  know  if  he  be  a 
Brazilian  or  a Patagonian,  a Japanese  or  a Samoyede. 

9.  In  the  course  of  tlie  last  chapter,  I asked  the  reader  to 
hold  firmly  the  conception  of  the  great  division  of  climate, 
which  separated  the  wandering  races  of  Norway  and  Siberia 
from  the  calmly  resident  nations  of  Britain,  Gaul,  Germany, 
and  Dacia. 

Fasten  now  that  division  well  home  in  your  mind,  by  draw- 
ing, however  rudely,  the  course  of  the  two  rivers,  little 
thought  of  by  common  geographers,  but  of  quite  unspeakable 
importance  in  human  history,  the  Vistula  and  the  Dniester. 

10.  They  rise  within  thirty  miles  of  each  other,*  and  each 
runs,  not  counting  ins  and  outs,  its  clear  three  hundred  miles, 
— the  Vistula  to  the  north-east,  the  Dniester  to  the  south- 
west : the  two  of  them  together  cut  Europe  straight  across,  at 
the  broad  neck  of  it, — and,  more  deeply  looking  at  the  thing, 
they  divide  Europe,  properly  so  called— Europa’s  own,  and 
Jove’s, — the  small  education  able,  civilizable,  and  more  or 
less  mentally  rational  fragment  of  the  globe,  from  the  great 
Siberian  Wilderness,  Cis-Ural  and  Trans-Ural ; the  inconceiv- 
able chaotic  space,  occupied  datelessly  by  Scythians,  Tartars, 
Huns,  Cossacks,  Bears,  Ermines,  and  Mammoths,  in  various 
thickness  of  hide,  frost  of  brain,  and  woe  of  abode — or  of  un- 
abiding. Nobody’s  history  worth  making  out,  has  anything 
to  do  with  them  ; for  the  force  of  Scandinavia  never  came 
round  by  Finland  at  all,  but  always  sailed  or  paddled  itself 
across  the  Baltic,  or  down  the  rocky  west  coast ; and  the 
Siberian  and  Russian  ice-pressure  merely  drives  the  really 
memorable  races  into  greater  concentration,  and  kneads  them 
up  in  fiercer  and  more  necessitous  exploring  masses.  But  by 
those  exploring  masses,  of  true  European  birth,  our  own 
history  was  fashioned  for  ever ; and,  therefore,  these  two 
truncating  and  guarding  rivers  are  to  be  marked  on  your  map 
of  Europe  with  supreme  clearness  : the  Vistula,  with  Warsaw 
astride  of  it  half  way  down,  and  embouchure  in  Baltic, — the 
Dneister,  in  Euxine,  flowing  each  of  them,  measured  arrow- 
straight,  as  far  as  from  Edinburgh  to  London, — with  wind- 

* Taking  tlie  ‘ San  : branch  of  Upper  Vistula. 


TEE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


33 

iligs,*  tlie  Vistula  six  hundred  miles,  and  the  Dniester  five— 
count  them  together  for  a thousand  miles  of  moat , between 
Europe  and  the  Desert,  reaching  from  Dantzic  to  Odessa. 

11.  Having  got  your  Europe  moated  off  into  this  manage- 
able and  comprehensible  space,  you  are  next  to  fix  the  limits 
which  divide  the  four  Gothic  countries,  Britain,  Gaul,  Ger- 
many, and  Dacia,  from  the  four  Classic  countries,  Spain,  Italy, 
Greece,  and  Lydia. 

There  is  no  other  generally  opponent  term  to  ‘ Gothic  ’ but 
‘ Classic  ’ : and  I am  content  to  use  it,  for  the  sake  of  practi- 
cal breadth  and  clearness,  though  its  precise  meaning  for  a 
little  while  remain  unascertained.  Only  get  the  geography 
well  into  your  mind,  and  the  nomenclature  will  settle  itself  at 
its  leisure. 

12.  Broadly,  then,  you  have  sea  between  Britain  and  Spain 
— Pyrenees  between  Gaul  and  Spain — Alps  between  Ger- 
many and  Italy — Danube  between  Dacia  and  Greece.  You 
must  consider  everything  south  of  the  Danube  as  Greek,  vari- 
ously influenced  from  Athens  on  one  side,  Byzantium  on 
the  other : then,  across  the  iEgean,  you  have  the  great 
country  absurdly  called  Asia  Minor,  (for  we  might  just  as 
-well  call  Greece,  Europe  Minor,  or  Cornwall,  England  Minor,) 
but  which  is  properly  to  be  remembered  as  ‘Lydia,’  the 
country  which  infects  with  passion,  and  tempts  with  wealth  ; 
which  taught  the  Lydian  measure  in  music,  and  softened  the 
Greek  language  on  its  border  into  Ionic  ; which  gave  to  an- 
cient history  the  tale  of  Troy,  and  to  Christian  history,  the 
glow,  and  the  decline,  of  the  Seven  Churches. 

13.  Opposite  to  these  four  countries  in  the  south,  but  sep- 
arated from  them  either  by  sea  or  desert,  are  other  four,  as 
easily  remembered — -Morocco,  Libya,  Egypt,  and  Arabia. 

Morocco,  virtually  consisting  of  the  chain  of  Atlas  and  the 
coasts  depending  on  it,  may  be  most  conveniently  thought  of 
as  including  the  modern  Morocco  and  Algeria,  with  the  Cana- 
ries as  a dependent  group  of  islands. 

* Note,  however,  generally  that  the  strength  of  a river,  cseteris  pari-  ' 
bus,  is  to  be  estimated  by  its  straight  course,  windings  being  almost 
always  caused  by  fiats  in  which  it  can  receive  no  tributaries. 


J38 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US. 


Libya,  in  like  manner,  will  include  the  modern  Tunis  and 
Tripoli : it  will  begin  on  the  west  with  St.  Augustine’s  town 
of  Hippo  ; and  its  coast  is  colonized  from  Tyre  and  Greece, 
dividing  it  into  the  two  districts  of  Carthage  and  Cyrene. 
Egypt,  the  country  of  the  River,  and  Arabia,  the  country  of  no 
River,  are  to  be  thought  of  as  the  two  great  southern  powers 
of  separate  Religion. 

14.  You  have  thus,  easily  and  clearly  memorable,  twelve 
countries,  distinct  evermore  by  natural  laws,  and  forming 
three  zones  from  north  to  south,  all  healthily  habitable — but 
the  races  of  the  northernmost,  disciplined  in  endurance  of 
cold  ; those  of  the  central  zone,  perfected  by  the  enjoyable 
suns  alike  of  summer  and  winter  ; those  of  the  southern  zone, 
trained  to  endurance  of  heat.  Writing  them  now  in  tabular 
view, 

Britain  Gaul  Germany  Dacia 

Spain  Italy  Greece  Lydia 

Morocco  Libya  Egypt  Arabia, 

you  have  the  ground  of  all  useful  profane  history  mapped  out 
in  the  simplest  terms  ; and  then,  as  the  fount  of  inspiration, 
for  all  these  countries,  with  the  strength  which  every  soul  that 
lias  possessed,  has  held  sacred  and  supernatural,  you  have 
last  to  conceive  perfectly  the  small  hill  district  of  the  Holy 
Land,  with  Philistia  and  Syria  on  its  flanks,  both  of  them 
chastising  forces  ; but  Syria,  in  the  beginning,  herself  the  ori- 
gin of  the  chosen  race — “A  Syrian  ready  to  perish  was  my 
father 55 — and  the  Syrian  Rachel  being  thought  of  always  as 
the  true  mother  of  Israel. 

15.  And  remember,  in  all  future  study  of  the  relations  of 
these  countries,  you  must  never  allow  your  mind  to  be  dis- 
turbed by  the  accidental  changes  of  political  limit.  No  mat- 
ter who  rules  a country,  no  matter  what  it  is  officially  called, 
or  how  it  is  formally  divided,  eternal  bars  and  doors  are  set 
to  it  by  the  mountains  and  seas,  eternal  laws  enforced  over  it 
by  the  clouds  and  stars.  The  people  that  are  born  on  it  are 
Us  people,  be  they  a thousand  times  again  and  again  con- 
quered, exiled,  or  captive.  The  stranger  cannot  be  its  king. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


839 


the  invader  cannot  be  its  possessor  ; and,  although  just  laws, 
maintained  whether  by  the  people  or  their  conquerors,  have 
always  the  appointed  good  and  strength  of  justice,  nothing  is 
permanently  helpful  to  any  race  or  condition  of  men  but  the 
spirit  that  is  in  their  own  hearts,  kindled  by  the  love  of  their 
native  land. 

16.  Of  course,  in  saying  that  the  invader  cannot  be  the  pos- 
sessor of  any  country,  I speak  only  of  invasion  such  as  that 
by  the  Vandals  of  Libya,  or  by  ourselves  of  India  ; where  the 
conquering  race  does  not  become  permanently  inhabitant. 
You  are  not  to  call  Libya  Vandalia,  nor  India  England,  be- 
cause these  countries  are  temporarily  under  the  rule  of  Van- 
dals and  English  ; neither  Italy  Gothland  under  Ostrogoths, 
nor  England  Denmark  under  Canute.  National  character 
varies  as  it  fades  under  invasion  or  in  corruption  ; but  if  ever 
it  glows  again  into  a new  life,  that  life  must  be  tempered  by 
the  earth  and  sky  of  the  country  itself.  Of  the  twelve  names 
of  countries  now  given  in  their  order,  only  one  will  be  changed 
as  we  advance  in  our  history ; — Gaul  will  properly  become 
France  when  the  Franks  become  her  abiding  inhabitants. 
The  other  eleven  primary  names  wall  serve  us  to  the  end. 

17.  With  a moment’s  more  patience,  therefore,  glancing  to 
the  far  East,  we  shall  have  laid  the  foundations  of  all  our  own 
needful  geography.  As  the  northern  kingdoms  are  moated 
from  the  Scythian  desert  by  the  Vistula,  so  the  southern  are 
moated  from  the  dynasties  properly  called  ‘ Oriental  ’ by  the 
Euphrates ; which,  “ partly  sunk  beneath  the  Persian  Gulf, 
reaches  from  the  shores  of  Beloocliistan  and  Oman  to  the 
mountains  of  Armenia,  and  forms  a huge  hot-air  funnel,  the 
base  ” (or  mouth)  “ of  which  is  on  the  tropics,  while  its  ex- 
tremity reaches  thirty-seven  degrees  of  northern  latitude. 
Hence  it  comes  that  the  Semoom  itself  (the  specific  and  gas- 
eous Semoom)  pays  occasional  visits  to  Mosoul  and  Djezeerat 
Omer,  while  the  thermometer  at  Bagdad  attains  in  summer 
an  elevation  capable  of  staggering  the  belief  of  even  an  old 
Indian.”  * 

* Sir  F.  Palgrave,  ‘ Arabia,’  vol  ii. , p.  155.  I gratefully  adopt  in  th« 
next  paragraph  his  division  of  Asiatic  nations,  p.  160. 


340 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US.” 

18.  This  valley  in  ancient  days  formed  the  kingdom  of 
Assyria,  as  the  vally  of  the  Nile  formed  that  of  Egypt.  In  the 
work  now  before  us,  we  have  nothing  to  do  with  its  people, 
who  were  to  the  Jews  merely  a hostile  power  of  captivity,  in- 
exorable as  the  clay  of  their  walls,  or  the  stones  of  their  stat- 
ues ; and,  after  the  birth  of  Christ,  the  marshy  valley  is  no 
more  than  a field  of  battle  between  West  and  East.  Beyond 
the  great  river, — Persia,  India,  and  China,  form  the  southern 
‘ Oriens.’  Persia  is  properly  to  be  conceived  as  reaching  from 
the  Persian  Gulf  to  the  mountain  chains  which  flank  and  feed 
the  Indus  ; and  is  the  true  vital  power  of  the  East  in  the  days 
of  Marathon  : but  it  has  no  influence  on  Christian  history  ex- 
cept through  Arabia  ; while,  of  the  northern  Asiatic  tribes, 
Mede,  Bactrian,  Parthian,  and  Scythian,  changing  into  Turk 
and  Tartar,  we  need  take  no  heed  until  they  invade  us  in  our 
own  historic  territory. 

19.  Using  therefore  the  terms  ‘Gothic’  and  ‘Classic’  for 
broad  distinction  of  the  northern  and  central  zones  of  this  our 
own  territory,  we  may  conveniently  also  use  the  word  ‘ Arab  ’ * 
for  the  whole  southern  zone.  The  influence  of  Egypt  vanishes 
soon  after  the  fourth  century,  while  that  of  Arabia,  powerful 
from  the  beginning,  rises  in  the  sixth  into  an  empire  whose 
end  we  have  not  seen.  And  you  may  most  rightly  conceive 
the  religious  principle  which  is  the  base  of  that  empire,  by 
remembering,  that  while  the  Jews  forfeited  their  prophetic 
power  by  taking  up  the  profession  of  usury  over  the  whole 
earth,  the  Arabs  returned  to  the  simplicity  of  prophecy  in  its 
beginning  by  the  well  of  Hagar,  and  are  not  opponents  to 
Christianity  ; but  only  to  the  faults  or  follies  of  Christians. 
They  keep  still  their  faith  in  the  one  God  who  spoke  to  Abra- 

* Gibbon’s  fifty-sixth  chapter  begins  with  a sentence  which  may  be 
taken  as  the  epitome  of  the  entire  history  we  have  to  investigate  : “The 
three  great  nations  of  the  world,  the  Greeks,  the  Saracens,  and  the 
Franks,  encountered  each  other  on  the  theatre  of  Italy.”  I use  the 
more  general  word,  Goths,  instead  of  Franks ; and  the  more  accurate 
word,  Arab,  for  Saracen ; but  otherwise,  the  reader  will  observe  that 
the  division  is  the  same  as  mine.  Gibbon  does  not  recognize  the  Ro« 
man  people  as  a nation — but  only  the  Roman  power  as  an  empire- 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


341 


ham  their  Father  ; and  are  His  children  in  that  simplicity,  far 
more  truly  than  the  nominal  Christians  who  lived,  and  live, 
only  to  dispute  in  vociferous  council,  or  in  frantic  schism,  the 
relations  of  the  Father,  the  Son,  and  the  Holy  Ghost, 

20.  Trusting*  my  reader  then  in  future  to  retain  in  his  mind 
without  confusion  the  idea  of  the  three  zones,  Gothic,  Classic, 
and  Arab,  each  divided  into  four  countries,  clearly  recogniz- 
able through  all  ages  of  remote  or  recent  history  ; — I must 
farther,  at  once,  simplify  for  him  the  idea  of  the  Koman  Em- 
pire, (see  note  to  last  paragraph,)  in  the  manner  of  its  affect- 
ing them.  Its  nominal  extent,  temporary  conquests,  civil 
dissensions,  or  internal  vices,  are  scarcely  of  any  historical 
moment  at  all ; the  real  Empire  is  effectual  only  as  an  expo- 
nent of  just  law,  military  order,  and  mechanical  art,  to  un- 
trained races,  and  as  a translation  of  Greek  thought  into  less 
diffused  and  more  tenable  scheme  for  them.  The  Classic 
zone,  from  the  beginning  to  the  end  of  its  visible  authority, 
is  composed  of  these  two  elements — Greek  imagination,  with 
Koman  order  : and  the  divisions  or  dislocations  of  the  third 
and  fourth  century  are  merely  the  natural  apparitions  of  their 
differences,  when  the  political  system  which  concealed  them 
was  tested  by  Christianity.  It  seems  almost  wholly  lost  sight 
of  by  ordinary  historians,  that,  in  the  wars  of  the  last  Komans 
with  the  Goths,  the  great  Gothic  captains  were  all  Christians  ; 
and  that  the  vigorous  and  naive  form  which  the  dawning  faith 
took  in  their  minds  is  a more  important  subject  of  investiga- 
tion, by  far,  than  the  inevitable  wars  which  followed  the  re- 
tirement of  Diocletian,  or  the  confused  schisms  and  crimes  of 
the  lascivious  court  of  Constantine.  I am  compelled,  how- 
ever, to  notice  the  terms  in  which  the  last  arbitrary  dissolu* 
tions  of  the  empire  took  place,  that  they  may  illustrate,  in- 
stead of  confusing,  the  arrangement  of  the  nations  which  I 
would  fasten  in  your  memory. 

21.  In  the  middle  of  the  fourth  century  you  have,  politically, 
what  Gibbon  calls  “ the  final  division  of  the  Eastern  and  West- 
ern Empires.”  This  really  means  only  that  the  Emperor 
Yalentinian,  yielding,  though  not  without  hesitation,  to  the 
feeling  now  confirmed  in  the  legions  that  the  Empire  was  too 


342 


‘ OU.lt  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLL  US” 


vast  to  be  held  by  a single  person,  takes  bis  brother  for  his 
colleague,  and  divides,  not,  truly  speaking,  their  authority, 
but  their  attention,  between  the  east  and  the  west.  To  his 
brother  Yalens  he  assigns  the  extremely  vague  “ Prefecture 
of  the  East,  from  the  lower  Danube  to  the  confines  of  Persia,” 
while  for  his  own  immediate  government  he  reserves  the 
“ warlike  prefectures  of  Illyricum,  Italy,  and  Gaul,  from  the 
extremity  of  Greece  to  the  Caledonian  rampart,  and  from  the 
rampart  of  Caledonia  to  the  foot  of  Mount  Atlas.”  That  is  to 
say,  in  less  poetical  cadence,  (Gibbon  had  better  have  put  his 
history  into  hexameters  at  once,)  Yalentinian  kept  under  his 
own  watch  the  whole  of  Roman  Eurojoe  and  Africa,  and  left 
Lydia  and  Caucasus  to  his  brother.  Lydia  and  Caucasus  never 
did,  and  never  could,  form  an  Eastern  Empire, — they  were 
merely  outside  dependencies,  useful  for  taxation  in  peace, 
dangerous  by  their  multitudes  in  war.  There  never  wras,  from 
the  seventh  century  before  Christ  to  the  seventh  after  Christ, 
but  one  Roman  Empire,  which  meant,  the  power  over  human- 
ity of  such  men  as  Cincinnatus  and  Agricola ; it  expires  as 
the  race  and  temper  of  these  expire  ; the  nominal  extent  of  it, 
or  brilliancy  at  any  moment,  is  no  more  than  the  reflection, 
farther  or  nearer  upon  the  clouds,  of  the  flames  of  an  altar 
whose  fuel  was  of  noble  souls.  There  is  no  true  date  for  its 
division  ; there  is  none  for  its  destruction.  Whether  Dacian 
Probus  or  Noric  Odoacer  be  on  the  throne  of  it,  the  force  of 
its  living  principle  alone  is  to  be  watched — remaining,  in  arts, 
in  laws,  and  in  habits  of  thought,  dominant  still  in  Europe 
down  to  the  twelfth  century  ; — in  language  and  example, 
dominant  over  all  educated  men  to  this  hour. 

22.  Rut  in  the  nominal  division  of  it  by  Yalentinian,  let 
us  note  Gibbon’s  definition  (I  assume  it  to  be  his,  not  the 
Emperor’s)  of  European  Roman  Empire  into  Illyricum,  Italy, 
and  Gaul.  I have  already  said  you  must  hold  everything 
south  of  the  Danube  for  Greek.  The  two  chief  districts  im- 
mediately south  of  the  stream  are  upper  and  lower  Moesia, 
consisting  of  the  slope  of  the  Thracian  mountains  northward 
to  the  river,  with  the  plains  between  it  and  them.  This  dis- 
trict you  must  notice  for  its  importance  in  forming  the  Moeso- 


TIIE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


343 


Gothic  alphabet,  in  which  “ the  Greek  is  by  far  the  principal 
element,”*  giving  sixteen  letters  out  of  the  twenty-four.  The 
Gothic  invasion  under  the  reign  of  Yalens  is  the  first  that 
establishes  a Teutonic  nation  within  the  frontier  of  the  em- 
pire ; but  they  only  thereby  bring  themselves  more  directly 
under  its  spiritual  power.  Their  bishop,  XJlphilas,  adopts 
this  Moesian  alphabet,  two-thirds  Greek,  for  his  translation  of 
the  Bible,  and  it  is  universally  disseminated  and  perpetuated 
by  that'  translation,  until  the  extinction  or  absorption  of  the 
Gothic  race. 

23.  South  of  the  Thracian  mountains  you  have  Thrace 
herself,  and  the  countries  confusedly  called  Dalmatia  and 
Illyria,  forming  the  coast  of  the  Adriatic,  and  reaching  in- 
wards and  eastwards  to  the  mountain  watershed.  I have 
never  been  able  to  form  a clear  notion  myself  of  the  real 
character  of  the  people  of  these  districts,  in  any  given  period  ; 
but  they  are  all  to  be  massed  together  as  northern  Greek, 
having  more  or  less  of  Greek  blood  and  dialect  according  to 
their  nearness  to  Greece  proper  ; though  neither  sharing  in 
her  philosophy,  nor  submitting  to  her  discipline.  But  it  is 
of  course  far  more  accurate,  in  broad  terms,  to  speak  of  these 
Illyrian,  Moesian,  and  Macedonian  districts  as  all  Greek,  than 
with  Gibbon  or  Valentinian  to  speak  of  Greece  and  Macedonia 
as  all  Illyrian. \ 

24.  In  the  same  imperial  or  poetical  generalization,  we  find 
England  massed  with  France  under  the  term  Gaul,  and 
bounded  by  the  “ Caledonian  rampart.”  Whereas  in  our  own 
division,  Caledonia,  Hibernia,  and  Wales,  are  from  the  first 
considered  as  essential  parts  of  Britain,  J and  the  link  with 

* Milman,  ‘Hist,  of  Christianity,’  vol.  iii.  p.  36. 

f I find  the  same  generalization  expressed  to  the  modern  student 
under  the  term  * Balkan  Peninsula,’  extinguishing  every  ray  and  trace 
of  past  history  at  once. 

\ Gibbon’s  more  deliberate  statement  is  clear  enough.  “From  the 
coast  or  the  extremity  of  Caithness  and  Ulster,  the  memory  of  Celtic 
origin  was  distinctly  preserved  in  the  perpetual  resemblance  of  lan- 
guages, religion,  and  manners,  and  the  peculiar  character  of  the  British 
tribes  might  be  naturally  ascribed  to  the  influence  of  accidental  and 
local  circumstances.”  The  Lowland  Scots,  “wheat-eaters’’  or  Wan- 


344 


“ OUR  FATRERS  HAVE  TOLD  US.” 


the  continent  is  to  be  conceived  as  formed  by  the  settlement 
of  Britons  in  Britany,  and  not  at  all  by  Koman  authority  be- 
yond the  Humber. 

25.  Thus,  .then,  once  more  reviewing  our  order  of  countries, 
and  noting  only  that  the  British  Islands,  though  for  the  most 
part  thrown  by  measured  degree  much  north  of  the  rest  of 
the  north  zone,  are  brought  by  the  influence  of  the  Gulf  stream 
into  the  same  climate  ; — you  have,  at  the  time  when  our  his- 
tory of  Christianity  begins,  the  Gothic  zone  yet  unconverted, 
and  having  not  yet  even  heard  of  the  new  faith.  You  have 
the  Classic  zone  variously  and  increasingly  conscious  of  it, 
disputing  with  it,  striving  to  extinguish  it — and  your  Arab 
zone,  the  ground  and  sustenance  of  it,  encompassing  the  Holy 
Land  with  the  warmth  of  its  own  wings,  and  cherishing 
there — embers  of  phoenix  fire  over  all  the  earth, — the  hope  of 
Resurrection. 

26.  What  would  have  been  the  course,  or  issue,  of  Chris- 
tianity, had  it  been  orally  preached  only,  and  unsupported  by 
its  poetical  literature,  might  be  the  subject  of  deeply  instruc- 
tive speculation — if  a historian’s  duty  were  to  reflect  instead 
of  record.  The  power  of  the  Christian  faith  was  however,  in 
the  fact  of  it,  always  founded  on  the  written  prophecies  and 
histories  of  the  Bible  ; and  on  the  interpretations  of  their 
meaning,  given  by  the  example,  far  more  than  by  the  precept, 
of  the  great  monastic  orders.  The  poetry  and  history  of  the 
Syrian  Testaments  were  put  within  their  reach  by  St.  Jerome, 
while  the  virtue  and  efficiency  of  monastic  life  are  all  express- 
ed, and  for  the  most  part  summed,  in  the  rule  of  St.  Bene- 

derers,  and  the  Irish,  are  very  positively  identified  by  Gibbon  at  the 
time  onr  own  history  begins.  “It  is  certain”  (italics  his,  not  mine) 
“that  in  the  declining  age  of  the  Roman  Empire,  Caledonia,  Ireland, 
and  the  Isle  of  Mau,  were  inhabited  by  the  Scots.” — Chap.  25,  vol.  iv., 
p.  279. 

The  higher  civilization  and  feebler  courage  of  the  Lowland  English 
rendered  them  either  the  victims  of  Scotland,  or  the  grateful  subjects  of 
Rome,  The  mountaineers,  Piet  among  the  Grampians,  or  of  their  own 
colour  in  Cornwall  and  Wales,  have  never  been  either  instructed  or 
subdued,  and  remain  to  this  day  the  artless  and  fearless  strength  of 
the  British  race. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


345 


diet.  To  understand  the  relation  of  the  work  of  these  two 
men  to  the  general  order  of  the  Church,  is  quite  the  first  re- 
quirement for  its  farther  intelligible  history. 

26.  Gibbon’s  thirty-seventh  chapter  professes  to  give  an  ac- 
count of  the  4 Institution  of  the  Monastic  Life 5 in  the  third 
century.  But  the  monastic  life  had  been  instituted  somewhat 
earlier,  and  by  many  prophets  and  kings.  By  Jacob,  when  he 
laid  the  stone  for  his  pillow  ; by  Moses,  when  he  drew  aside  to 
see  the  burning  bush  ; by  David,  before  he  had  left  “ those  few 
sheep  in  the  wilderness  ; ” and  by  the  prophet  who  44  was  in  the 
desert  till  the  time  of  his  showing  unto  Israel.”  Its  primary 
4C  institution,”  for  Europe,  was  Numa’s,  in  that  of  the  Yestal 
Virgins,  and  College  of  Augurs ; founded  on  the  originally 
Etrurian  and  derived  Roman  conception  of  pure  life  dedicate 
to  the  service  of  God,  and  practical  wisdom  dependent  on  His 
guidance.* 

The  form  which  the  monastic  spirit  took  in  later  times 
depended  far  more  on  the  corruption  of  the  common  world, 
from  which  it  was  forced  to  recoil  either  in  indignation  or 
terror,  than  on  any  change  brought  about  by  Christianity  in 
the  ideal  of  human  virtue  and  happiness. 

27.  44  Egypt  ” (Mr.  Gibbon  thus  begins  to  account  for  the 
new  institution !),  44  the  fruitful  parent  of  superstition,  af- 
forded the  first  example  of  monastic  life.”  Egypt  had  her 
superstitions,  like  other  countries ; but  was  so  little  the 
parent  of  superstition  that  perhaps  no  faith  among  the  imagi- 
native races  of  the  world  has  been  so  feebly  missionary  as 
hers.  She  never  prevailed  on  even  the  nearest  of  her  neigh- 
bours to  worship  cats  or  cobras  with  her  ; and  I am  alone,  to 
my  belief,  among  recent  scholars,  in  maintaining  Herodotus’ 
statement  of  her  influence  on  the  archaic  theology  of  Greece. 

* I should  myself  mark  as  the  fatallest  instant  in  the  decline  of  the 
Roman  Empire,  Julian’s  rejection  of  the  counsel  of  the  Augurs.  “For 
the  last  time,  the  Etruscan  Haruspices  accompanied  a Roman  Emperor, 
hut  by  a singular  fatality  their  adverse  interpretation  by  the  signs  of 
heaven  was  disdained,  and  Julian  followed  the  advice  of  the  phi- 
losophers, who  coloured  their  predictions  with  the  bright  hues  of  the 
Emperor’s  ambition.”  (Milmaiu  Hist,  of  Christianity,  chap,  vi.) 


346 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  USD 


But  tliat  influence,  if  any,  was  formative  and  delineative  ; not 
ritual : so  that  in  no  case,  and  in  no  country,  was  Egypt  the 
parent  of  Superstition ; while  she  was  beyond  all  dispute,  for 
all  people  and  to  all  time,  the  parent  of  Geometry,  Astronomy, 
Architecture,  and  Chivalry.  She  was,  in  its  material  and 
technic  elements,  the  mistress  of  Literature,  showing  authors 
who  before  could  only  scratch  on  wax  and  wood,  how  to 
weave  paper  and  engrave  porphyry.  She  was  the  first  ex- 
ponent of  the  law  of  Judgment  after  Death  for  Sin.  She  was 
the  Tutrees  of  Moses  ; and  the  Hostess  of  Christ. 

28.  It  is  both  probable  and  natural  that,  in  such  a country, 
the  disciples  of  any  new  spiritual  doctrine  should  bring  it  to 
closer  trial  than  was  possible  among  the  illiterate  warriors,  or 
in  the  storm-vexed  solitudes  of  the  North  ; yet  it  is  a thought- 
less error  to  deduce  the  subsequent  power  of  cloistered  frater- 
nity from  the  lonely  passions  of  Egyptian  monachism.  The 
anchorites  of  the  first  three  centuries  vanish  like  feverish 
spectres,  when  the  rational,  merciful,  and  laborious  laws  of 
Christian  societies  are  established  ; and  the  clearly  recog- 
nizable rewards  of  heavenly  solitude  are  granted  to  those 
only  who  seek  the  Desert  for  its  redemption. 

29.  ‘ The  clearly  recognizable  rewards,’  I repeat,  and  with 
cautious  emphasis.  No  man  has  any  data  for  estimating,  far 
less  right  of  judging,  the  results  of  a life  of  resolute  self- 
denial,  until  he  has  had  the  courage  to  try  it  himself,  at 
least  for  a time : but  I believe  no  reasonable  person  will 
wish,  and  no  honest  person  dare,  to  deny  the  benefits  he  has 
occasionally  felt  both  in  mind  and  body,  during  periods  of 
accidental  privation  from  luxury,  or  exposure  to  danger.  The 
extreme  vanity  of  the  modern  Englishman  in  making  a mo- 
mentary Stylites  of  himself  on  the  top  of  a Horn  or  an 
Aiguille,  and  his  occasional  confession  of  a charm  in  the 
solitude  of  the  rocks,  of  which  he  modifies  nevertheless  the 
poignancy  with  his  pocket  newspaper,  and  from  the  prolonga- 
tion of  which  he  thankfully  escapes  to  the  nearest  table-d’hote, 
ought  to  make  us  less  scornful  of  the  pride,  and  more  intel- 
ligent of  the  passion,  in  which  the  mountain  anchorites  of 
Arabia  and  Palestine  condemned  themselves  to  lives  of  seclu- 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


347 


sion  and  suffering,  which  were  comforted  only  by  supernatural 
vision,  or  celestial  hope.  That  phases  of  mental  disease  are 
the  necessary  consequence  of  exaggerated  and  independent 
emotion  of  any  kind  must,  of  course,  be  remembered  in  read- 
ing the  legends  of  the  wilderness ; but  neither  physicians  nor 
moralists  have  yet  attempted  to  distinguish  the  morbid  states 
of  intellect*  which  are  extremities  of  noble  passion,  from 
those  which  are  the  punishments  of  ambition,  avarice,  or  las- 
civiousness. 

30.  Setting  all  questions  of  this  nature  aside  for  the  mo- 
ment, my  younger  readers  need  only  hold  the  broad  fact  that 
during  the  whole  of  the  fourth  century,  multitudes  of  self- 
devoted  men  led  lives  of  extreme  misery  and  poverty  in  the 
effort  to  obtain  some  closer  knowledge  of  the  Being  and  Will 
of  God.  We  know,  in  any  available  clearness,  neither  what 
they  suffered,  nor  what  they  learned.  We  cannot  estimate 
the  solemnizing  or  reproving  power  of  their  examples  on  the 
less  zealous  Christian  world  ; and  only  God  knows  how  far 
their  prayers  for  it  wrere  heard,  or  their  persons  accepted. 
This  only  we  may  observe  with  reverence,  that  among  all  their 

* Gibbon’s  hypothetical  conclusion  respecting  the  effects  of  self- 
mortification,  and  his  following  historical  statement,  must  be  noted 
as  in  themselves  containing  the  entire  views  of  the  modern  philos- 
ophies and  policies  which  have  since  changed  the  monasteries  of  Italy 
into  barracks,  and  the  churches  of  France  into  magazines.  “ This  volun- 
tary martyrdom  must  have  gradually  destroyed  the  sensibility,  both  of 
mind  and  body;  nor  can  it  be  presumed  that  the  fanatics  who  torment 
themselves,  are  capable  of  any  lively  affection  for  the  rest  of  mankind. 
A cruel  unfeeling  temper  has  characterized  the  monks  of  every  age  and 
country 

How  much  of  penetration,  or  judgment,  this  sentence  exhibits,  I hope 
will  become  manifest  to  the  reader  as  I unfold  before  him  the  actual 
history  of  his  faith ; but  being,  I suppose,  myself  one  of  the  last 
surviving  witnesses  of  the  character  of  recluse  life  as  it  still  existed 
in  the  beginning  of  this  century,  I can  point  to  the  portraiture  of  it 
given  by  Scott  in  the  introduction  to  ‘The  Monastery’  as  one  perfect 
and  trustworthy,  to  the  letter  and  to  the  spirit  ; and  for  myself  can  say, 
that  the  most  gentle,  refined,  and  in  the  deepest  sense  amiable,  phases 
of  character  I have  ever  known,  have  been  either  those  of  monks,  or  of 
servants  trained  in  the  Catholic  Faith. 


348 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  USE 


numbers,  none  seem  to  have  repented  their  chosen  manner  of 
existence  ; none  perish  by  melancholy  or  suicide  ; their  self- 
adjudged  sufferings  are  never  inflicted  in  the  hope  of  shorten- 
ing the  lives  they  embitter  or  purify  ; and  the  hours  of  dream 
or  meditation,  on  mountain  or  in  cave,  appear  seldom  to  have 
dragged  so  heavily  as  those  which,  without  either  vision  or 
reflection,  we  pass  ourselves,  on  the  embankment  and  in  the 
tunnel. 

31.  But  whatever  may  be  alleged,  after  ultimate  and  honest 
scrutiny,  of  the  follies  or  virtues  of  anchorite  life,  we  are  un- 
just to  Jerome  if  we  think  of  him  as  its  introducer  into  the 
West  of  Europe.  He  passed  through  it  himself  as  a phase  of 
spiritual  discipline  ; but  he  represents,  in  his  total  nature  and 
final  work,  not  the  vexed  inactivity  of  the  Eremite,  but  the 
eager  industry  of  a benevolent  tutor  and  pastor.  His  heart 
is  in  continual  fervor  of  admiration  or  of  hope — remaining  to 
the  last  as  impetuous  as  a child’s,  but  as  affectionate  ; and  the 
discrepancies  of  Protestant  objection  by  which  his  character 
has  been  confused,  or  concealed,  may  be  gathered  in  some 
dim  picture  of  his  real  self  when  once  we  comprehend  the 
simplicity  of  his  faith,  and  sympathise  a little  with  the  eager 
charity  which  can  so  easily  be  wounded  into  indignation,  and 
is  never  repressed  by  policy. 

32.  The  slight  trust  which  can  be  placed  in  modern  read- 
ings of  him,  as  they  now  stand,  may  be  at  once  proved  by 
comparing  the  two  passages  in  which  Milman  has  variously 
guessed  at  the  leading  principles  of  his  political  conduct. 
“ Jerome  began  (!)  and  ended  his  career  as  a monk  of  Pales- 
tine ; he  attained,  he  aspired  to,  no  dignity  in  the  Church. 
Though  ordained  a presbyter  against  his  will,  he  escaped  the 
episcopal  dignity  which  was  forced  upon  his  distinguished 
contemporaries.”  ( ‘ History  of  Christianity,’  Book  III.) 

“Jerome  cherished  the  secret  hope,  if  it  was  not  the  avowed 
object  of  his  ambition,  to  succeed  Damasus  as  Bishop  of 
Rome.  Is  the  rejection  of  an  aspirant  so  singularly  unfit  for 
the  station,  from  his  violent  passions,  his  insolent  treatment 
of  his  adversaries  his  utter  want  of  self-command,  his  almost 
unrivalled  faculty  of  awakening  hatred,  to  be  attributed  to  the 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


349 


sagacious  and  intuitive  wisdom  of  Borne  ?”  ( £ History  of  Latin 
Christianity,’  Book  I.,  chap,  ii.) 

33.  You  may  observe,  as  an  almost  unexceptional  character 
in  the  44  sagacious  wisdom  ” of  the  Protestant  clerical  mind, 
that  it  instinctively  assumes  the  desire  of  power  and  place  not 
only  to  be  universal  in  Priesthood,  but  to  be  always  purely 
selfish  in  the  ground  of  it.  The  idea  that  power  might  possi- 
bly be  desired  for  the  sake  of  its  benevolent  use,  so  far  as  I 
remember,  does  not  once  occur  in  the  pages  of  any  ecclesias- 
tical historian  of  recent  date.  In  our  own  reading  of  past 
ages  we  will,  with  the  reader’s  permission,  very  calmly  put  out 
of  court  all  accounts  of  “hopes  cherished  in  secret  ” ; and  pay 
very  small  attention  to  the  reasons  for  medkeval  conduct 
which  appear  logical  to  the  rationalist,  and  probable  to  the 
politician.*  We  concern  ourselves  only  with  what  these  sin- 
gular and  fantastic  Christians  of  the  past  really  said,  and 
assuredly  did. 

34.  Jerome’s  life  by  no  means  44  began  as  a monk  of  Pales- 
tine.” Dean  Milman  has  not  explained  to  us  how  any  man’s 
could ; but  Jerome’s  childhood,  at  any  rate,  was  extremely 
other  than  recluse,  or  precociously  religious.  He  was  born 
of  rich  parents  living  on  their  own  estate,  the  name  of  his  na- 
tive town  in  North  Illyria,  Stridon,  perhaps  now  softened  into 
Strigi,  near  Aquileia.  In  Venetian  climate,  at  all  events,  and 
in  sight  of  Alps  and  sea.  He  had  a brother  and  sister,  a kind 
grandfather,  and  a disagreeable  private  tutor,  and  was  a youth 
still  studying  grammar  at  Julian’s  death  in  363. 

* The  habit  of  assuming,  for  the  conduct  of  men  of  sense  and  feeling, 
motives  intelligible  to  the  foolish,  and  probable  to  the  base,  gains  upon 
every  vulgar  historian,  partly  in  the  ease  of  it,  partly  in  the  pride  ; and 
it  is  horrible  to  contemplate  the  quantity  of  false  witness  against  their 
neighbours  which  commonplace  writers  commit,  in  the  mere  rounding 
and  enforcing  of  their  shallow  sentences.  “Jerome  admits,  indeed, 
with  specious  but  doubtful  humility , the  inferiority  of  the  unordained 
monk  to  the  ordained  priest,”  says  Dean  Milman  in  his  eleventh  chapter, 
following  up  his  gratuitous  doubt  of  Jerome’s  humility  with  no  less 
gratuitous  asseveration  of  the  ambition  of  his  opponents.  “The  clergy, 
no  doubt , had  the  sagacity  to  foresee  the  dangerous  rival  as  to  influence 
and  authority,  which  was  rising  up  in  Christian  society  ’’ 


350 


ts  OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US.” 

35.  A youth  of  eighteen,  and  well  begun  in  all  institutes  of 
the  classic  schools  ; but,  so  far  from  being  a monk,  not  yet  a 
Christian  ; — nor  at  all  disposed  towards  the  severer  offices 
even  of  Roman  life  ! or  contemplating  with  aversion  the  splen- 
dours, either  worldly  or  sacred,  which  shone  on  him  in  the 
college  days  spent  in  its  Capital  city. 

For  the  “power  and  majesty  of  Paganism  were  still  concen- 
trated at  Rome  ; the  deities  of  the  ancient  faith  found  their 
last  refuge  in  the  capital  of  the  empire.  To  the  stranger, 
Rome  still  offered  the  appearance  of  a Pagan  city.  It  con- 
tained one  hundred  and  fifty-two  temples,  and  one  hundred 
and  eighty  smaller  chapels  or  shrines,  still  sacred  to  their  tu- 
telary God,  and  used  for  public  worship.  Christianity  had 
neither  ventured  to  usurp  those  few  buildings  which  might  be 
converted  to  her  use,  still  less  had  she  the  power  to  destroy 
them.  The  religious  edifices  were  under  the  protection  of 
the  prsefect  of  the  city,  and  the  prsefect  was  usually  a Pagan  ; 
at  all  events  he  would  not  permit  any  breach  of  the  public 
peace,  or  violation  of  public  property.  Above  all  still  towered 
the  Capitol,  in  its  unassailed  and  awful  majesty,  with  its  fifty 
temples  or  shrines,  bearing  the  most  sacred  names  in  the  re- 
ligious and  civil  annals  of  Rome,  those  of  Jove,  of  Mars,  of 
Janus,  of  Romulus,  of  Caesar,  of  Victory.  Some  years  after 
the  accession  of  Theodosius  to  the  Eastern  empire,  the  sacri- 
fices were  still  performed  as  national  rites  at  the  public  cost, 
— the  pontiffs  made  their  offerings  in  the  name  of  the  whole  hu- 
man race.  The  Pagan  orator  ventures  to  assert  that  the  Em- 
peror dared  not  to  endanger  the  safety  of  the  empire  by  their 
abolition.  The  Emperor  still  bore  the  title  and  insignia  of 
the  Supreme  Pontiff ; the  Consuls,  before  they  entered  upon 
their  functions,  ascended  the  Capitol  ; the  religious  proces- 
sions passed  along  the  crotvded  streets,  and  the  people 
thronged  to  the  festivals  and  theatres  which  still  formed  part 
of  the  Pagan  worship.”  * 

36.  Here,  Jerome  must  have  heard  of  what  by  all  the  Chris- 
tian sects  w7as  held  the  judgment  of  God,  between  them  and 

* Mil  man,  ‘History  of  Christianity,’  vol.  iii.  p,  162.  Note  the  sen- 
tence in  italics,  for  it  relates  the  true  origin  of  the  Papacy. 


TEE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS, 


351 


their  chief  enemy — the  Death  of  the  Emperor  Julian.  But  I 
have  no  means  of  tracing,  and  will  not  conjecture,  the  course 
of  his  own  thoughts,  until  the  tenor  of  all  his  life  was  changed 
at  his  baptism.  The  candour  which  lies  at  the  basis  of  his 
character  has  given  us  one  sentence  of  his  own,  respecting 
that  change,  which  is  worth  some  volumes  of  ordinary  con- 
fessions. “I  left,  not  only  parents  and  kindred,  but  the  ac- 
customed luxuries  of  delicate  life.”  The  wrords  throw  full 
light  on  what,  to  our  less  courageous  temper,  seems  the  exag- 
gerated reading  by  the  early  converts  of  Christ’s  words  to 
them — “ He  that  loveth  father  or  mother  more  than  me,  is 
not  worthy  of  me.”  We  are  content  to  leave,  for  much  lower 
interests,  either  father  or  mother,  and  do  not  see  the  necessity 
of  any  farther  sacrifice  : we  should  know  more  of  ourselves  and 
of  Christianity  if  we  oftener  sustained  what  St.  Jerome  found 
the  most  searching  trial.  I find  scattered  indications  of  con-, 
tempt  among  his  biographers,  because  he  could  not  resign 
one  indulgence — that  of  scholarship  ; and  the  usual  sneers  at 
monkish  ignorance  and  indolence  are  in  his  case  transferred 
to  the  weakness  of  a pilgrim  who  carried  his  library  in  his 
wallet.  It  is  a singular  question  (putting,  as  it  is  the  modern 
fashion  to  do,  the  idea  of  Providence  wholly  aside),  whether, 
but  for  the  literary  enthusiasm,  which  was  partly  a weakness, 
of  this  old  man’s  character,  the  Bible  would  ever  have  become 
the  library  of  Europe. 

37.  For  that,  observe,  is  the  real  meaning,  in  its  first  pow- 
er, of  the  word  Bible.  Not  book,  merely  ; but  c Bibliotheca,’ 
Treasury  of  Books  : and  it  is,  I repeat,  a singular  question, 
how  far,  if  Jerome,  at  the  very  moment  when  Rome,  his  tu- 
tress,  ceased  from  her  material  power,  had  not  made  her  lan- 
guage the  oracle  of  Hebrew  prophecy,  a literature  of  their 
own,  and  a religion  unshadowed  by  the  terrors  of  the  Mosaic 
law,  might  have  developed  itself  in  the  hearts  of  the  Goth, 
the  Frank,  and  the  Saxon,  under  Theodoric,  Clovis,  and  Al- 
fred. 

38.  Fate  had  otherwise  determined,  and  Jerome  was  so 
passive  an  instrument  in  her  hands  that  he  began  the  study 
of  Hebrew  as  a discipline  only,  and  without  any  conception  of 


352 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLI)  USA 


the  task  he  was  to  fulfil,  still  less  of  the  scope  of  its  fulfil 
ment.  I could  joyfully  believe  that  the  words  of  Christ,  “If 
they  hear  not  Moses  and  the  Prophets,  neither  will  they  be 
persuaded  though  one  rose  from  the  dead,”  had  haunted  the 
spirit  of  the  recluse,  until  he  resolved  that  the  voices  of  im- 
mortal appeal  should  be  made  audible  to  the  Churches  of  all 
the  earth.  But  so  far  as  we  have  evidence,  there  was  no  such 
will  or  hope  to  exalt  the  quiet  instincts  of  his  natural  indus- 
try ; and  partly  as  a scholar’s  exercise,  partly  as  an  old  man’s 
recreation,  the  severity  of  the  Latin  language  was  softened, 
like  Venetian  crystal,  by  the  variable  fire  of  Hebrew  thought, 
and  the  “Book  of  Books”  took  the  abiding  form  of  which  all 
the  future  art  of  the  Western  nations  was  to  be  an  hourly  ex- 
panding interpretation. 

39.  And  in  this  matter  you  have  to  note  that  the  gist  of  it 
lies,  not  in  the  translation  of  the  Hebrew  and  Greek  Script- 
ures into  an  easier  and  a common  language,  but  in  their  pres- 
entation to  the  Church  as  of  common  authority.  The  earlier 
Gentile  Christians  had  naturally  a tendency  to  carry  out  in 
various  oral  exaggeration  or  corruption,  the  teaching  of  the 
Apostle  of  the  Gentiles,  until  their  freedom  from  the  bondage 
of  the  Jewish  law  passed  into  doubt  of  its  inspiration  ; and, 
after  the  fall  of  Jerusalem,  even  into  horror-stricken  interdic- 
tion of  its  observance.  So  that,  only  a few  years  after  the 
remnant  of  exiled  Jews  in  Pella  had  elected  the  Gentile  Mar- 
cus for  their  Bishop,  and  obtained  leave  to  return  to  the  iElia 
Capitolina  built  by  Hadrian  on  Mount  Zion,  “ it  became  a 
matter  of  doubt  and  controversy  whether  a man  who  sincerely 
acknowledged  Jesus  as  the  Messiah,  but  who  still  continued 
to  observe  the  law  of  Moses,  could  possibly  hope  for  salva- 
tion ! ” * While,  on  the  other  hand,  the  most  learned  and  the 
most  wealthy  of  the  Christian  name,  under  the  generally  rec- 
ognised title  of  “knowing”  (Gnostic),  had  more  insidiously 
effaced  the  authority  of  the  Evangelists  by  dividing  themselves, 
during  the  course  of  the  third  century,  “ into  more  than  fifty 
numerably  distinct  sects,  and  producing  a multitude  of  his- 


Gibbon,  chap.  xv.  (II.  277). 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS, . 


353 


tories,  in  which  the  actions  and  discourses  of  Christ  and  His 
Apostles  were  adapted  to  their  several  tenets.  ” * 

40.  It  would  be  a task  of  great,  and  in  nowise  profitable 
difficulty  to  determine  in  what  measure  the  consent  of  the 
general  Church,  and  in  what  measure  the  act  and  authority 
of  Jerome,  contributed  to  fix  in  their  ever  since  undisturbed 
harmony  and  majesty,  the  canons  of  Mosaic  and  Apostolic 
Scripture.  Ail  that  the  young  reader  need  know  is,  that 
when  Jerome  died  at  Bethlehem,  this  great  deed  was  virtually 
accomplished  : and  the  series  of  historic  and  didactic  books 
which  form  our  present  Bible,  (including  the  Apocrypha) 
were  established  in  and  above  the  nascent  thought  of  the 
noblest  races  of  men  living  on  the  terrestrial  globe,  as  a direct 
message  to  them  from  its  Maker,  containing  whatever  it  was 
necessary  for  them  to  learn  of  His  purposes  towards  them, 
and  commanding,  or  advising,  with  divine  authority  and  in- 
fallible wisdom,  all  that  wras  best  for  them  to  do,  and  happiest 
to  desire. 

41.  And  it  is  only  for  those  who  have  obeyed  the  law  sin- 
cerely, to  say  how  far  the  hope  held  out  to  them  by  the  law- 
giver has  been  fulfilled.  The  worst  “ children  of  disobedi- 
ence” are  those  wdio  accept,  of  the  Word,  what  they  like,  and 
refuse  what  they  hate  : nor  is  this  perversit}’-  in  them  always 
conscious,  for  the  greater  part  of  the  sins  of  the  Church  have 
been  brought  on  it  by  enthusiasm  which,  in  passionate  con- 
templation and  advocacy  of  parts  of  the  Scripture  easily 
grasped,  neglected  the  study,  and  at  last  betrayed  the  bal- 
ance, of  the  rest.  What  forms  and  methods  of  self-will  are 
concerned  in  the  wresting  of  the  Scriptures  to  a man’s  de- 
struction, is  for  the  keepers  of  consciences  to  examine,  not  for 
us.  The  history  we  have  to  learn  must  be  wholly  cleared  of  such 
debate,  and  the  influence  of  the  Bible  watched  exclusively  on 
the  persons  who  receive  the  Word  with  joy,  and  obey  it  in  truth. 

* Ibid. , II.  283.  His  expression  ‘ £ the  most  learned  and  most  wealthy  ,f 
should  be  remembered  in  confirmation  of  the  evermore  recurring  fact 
of  Christianity,  that  minds  modest  in  attainment,  and  lives  careless  of 
gain,  are  fittest  for  the  reception  of  every  constant, — i.e.  not  local  or  ac^ 
cidental,  — Christian  principle. 


as4 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US, > 


42.  There  has,  however,  been  always  a farther  difficulty  in 
examining  the  power  of  the  Bible,  than  that  of  distinguishing 
honest  from  dishonest  readers.  The  hold  of  Christianity  on 
the  souls  of  men  must  be  examined,  when  we  come  to  close 
dealing  with  it,  under  these  three  several  heads : there  is  first, 
the  power  of  the  Cross  itself,  and  of  the  theory  of  salvation, 
upon  the  heart, — then,  the  operation  of  the  Jewish  and  Greek 
Scriptures  on  the  intellect, — then,  the  influence  on  morals  of 
the  teaching  and  example  of  the  living'  hierarchy.  And  in  the 
comparison  of  men  as  they  are  and  as  they  might  have  been, 
there  are  these  three  questions  to  be  separately  kept  in  mind, 
— first,  what  would  have  been  the  temper  of  Europe  without 
the  charity  and  labour  meant  by  ‘bearing  the  Cross’  ; then, 
secondly,  what  would  the  intellect  of  Europe  have  become 
without  Biblical  literature  ; and  lastly,  what  would  the  social 
order  of  Europe  have  become  without  its  hierarchy. 

43.  You  see  I have  connected  the  -words  ‘ charity  ’ and 
‘labour’  under  the  general  term  of  ‘bearing  the  cross.’  “If 
any  man  -will  come  after  me,  let  him  deny  himself,  (for  charity) 
and  take  up  his  eross  (of  pain)  and  follow  me.” 

The  idea  has  been  exactly  reversed  by  modem  Protestant- 
ism, which  sees,  in  the  cross,  not  a furca  to  which  it  is  to  be 
nailed  ; but  a raft  on  which  it,  and  all  its  valuable  properties,^ 
are  to  be  floated  into  Paradise. 

44.  Only,  therefore,  in  days  when  the  Cross  was  received 
with  courage,  the  Scripture  searched  with  honesty,  and  the 
Pastor  heard  in  faith,  can  the  pure  word  of  God,  and  the 
bright  sword  of  the  Spirit,  be  recognised  in  the  heart  and 
hand  of  Christianity.  The  effect  of  Biblical  poetry  and  legend 
on  its  intellect,  must  be  traced  farther,  through  decadent  ages, 
and  in  unfenced  fields; — producing  ‘Paradise  Lost’  for  us, 
no  less  than  the  ‘ Divina  Commedia  ’ ; — Goethe’s  ‘ Faust,’  and 
Byron’s  ‘Cain,’  no  less  than  the  ‘Imitatio  Christi.’ 

45.  Much  more,  must  the  scholar,  who  would  comprehend 
in  any  degree  approaching  to  completeness,  the  influence  of 

* Quite  one  of  the  most  curious  colours  of  modern  Evangelical  thought 
is  its  pleasing  connection  of  Gospel  truth  with  the  extension  of  lucrative 
commerce  ! See  farther  the  note  at  p.  88. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS.  355 

the  Bible  on  mankind,  be  able  to  read  the  interpretations  of 
it  which  rose  into  the  great  arts  of  Europe  at  their  culmina- 
tion. In  every  province  of  Christendom,  according  to  the 
degree  of  art-power  it  possessed,  a series  of  illustrations  of 
the  Bible  were  produced  as  time  went  on  ; beginning  with 
vignetted  illustrations  of  manuscript,  advancing  into  life-size 
sculpture,  and  concluding  in  perfect  power  of  realistic  paint- 
ing. These  teachings  and  preachings  of  the  Church,  by  means 
of  art,  are  not  only  a most  important  part  of  the  general 
Apostolic  Acts  of  Christianity  ; but  their  study  is  a necessary 
part  of  Biblical  scholarship,  so  that  no  man  can  in  any  large 
sense  understand  the  Bible  itself  until  he  has  learned  also  to 
read  these  national  commentaries  upon  it,  and  been  made 
aware  of  their  collective  weight.  The  Protestant  reader,  who 
most  imagines  himself  independent  in  his  thought,  and  pri- 
vate in  his  stud}7,  of  Scripture,  is  nevertheless  usually  at  the 
mercy  of  the  nearest  preacher  who  has  a pleasant  voice  and 
ingenious  fancy  ; receiving  from  him  thankfully,  and  often 
reverently,  whatever  interpretation  of  texts  the  agreeable 
voice  or  ready  wit  may  recommend  : while,  in  the  meantime, 
he  remains  entirely  ignorant  of,  and  if  left  to  his  own  will, 
invariably  destroys  as  injurious,  the  deeply  meditated  inter- 
pretations of  Scripture  which,  in  their  matter,  have  been 
sanctioned  by  the  consent  of  all  the  Christian  Church  for  a 
thousand  years  ; and  in  their  treatment,  have  been  exalted  by 
the  trained  skill  and  inspired  imagination  of  the  noblest  souls 
ever  enclosed  in  mortal  clay. 

46.  There  are  few  of  the  fathers  of  the  Christian  Church 
whose  commentaries  on  the  Bible,  or  personal  theories  of  its 
gospel,  have  not  been,  to  the  constant  exultation  of  the  ene- 
mies of  the  Church,  fretted  and  disgraced  by  angers  of  con- 
troversy, or  weakened  and  distracted  by  irreconcilable  heresy. 
On  the  contrary,  the  scriptural  teaching,  through  their  art,  of 
such  men  as  Orcagna,  Giotto,  Angelico,  Luca  della  Robbia, 
and  Luini,  is,  literally,  free  from  all  earthly  taint  of  momen- 
tary passion  ; its  patience,  meekness,  and  quietness  are  inca- 
pable of  error  through  either  fear  or  anger  ; they  are  able, 
without  offence,  to  say  all  that  they  wish  , they  are  bound  by 


356 


*l  OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US” 


tradition  into  a brotherhood  which  represents  unperverted 
doctrines  by  unchanging  scenes  ; and  they  are  compelled  by 
the  nature  of  their  work  to  a deliberation  and  order  of  method 
which  result  in  the  purest  state  and  frankest  use  of  all  intel- 
lectual power. 

47.  I may  at  once,  and  without  need  of  returning  to  this 
question,  illustrate  the  difference  in  dignity  and  safety  be- 
tween the  mental  actions  of  literature  and  art,  by  referring 
to  a passage,  otherwise  beautifully  illustrative  of  St.  Jerome’s 
sweetness  and  simplicity  of  character,  though  quoted,  in  the 
place  where  we  find  it,  with  no  such  favouring  intention, — 
namely,  in  the  pretty  letter  of  Queen  Sophie  Charlotte,  (father’s 
mother  of  Frederick  the  Great,)  to  the  Jesuit  Yota,  given  in 
part  by  Carlyle  in  his  first  volume,  ch.  iv. 

“ ‘ How  can  St.  Jerome,  for  example,  be  a key  to  Scripture  ? ’ 
she  insinuates  ; citing  from  Jerome  this  remarkable  avowal  of 
his  method  of  composing  books  ; — especially  of  his  method  in 
that  book,  Commentary  on  the  Galatians,  where  he  accuses  both 
Peter  and  Paul  of  simulation,  and  even  of  hypocrisy.  The 
great  St.  Augustine  has  been  charging  him  with  this  sad  fact, 
(says  her  Majesty,  who  gives  chapter  and  verse,)  and  Jerome 
answers,  * I followed  the  commentaries  of  Origen,  of  ’ — five 
or  six  different  persons,  who  turned  out  mostly  to  be  heretics 
before  Jerome  had  quite  done  with  them,  in  coming  years, 
4 And  to  confess  the  honest  truth  to  you,’  continues  Jerome, 
c I read  all  that,  and  after  having  crammed  my  head  with  a 
great  many  things,  I sent  for  my  amanuensis,  and  dictated  to 
him,  now  my  own  thoughts,  now  those  of  others,  without 
much  recollecting  the  order,  nor  sometimes  the  words,  nor 
even  the  sense’ ! In  another  place,  (in  the  book  itself  further 
on  *)  he  says,  4 1 do  not  myself  write  ; I have  an  amanuensis, 
and  I dictate  to  him  what  comes  into  my  mouth.  If  I wish 
to  reflect  a little,  or  to  say  the  thing  better,  or  a better  thing, 
he  knits  his  brows,  and  the  whole  look  of  him  tells  me  suf- 
ficiently that  he  cannot  endure  to  wait.’  Here  is  a sacred  old 
gentleman  whom  it  is  not  safe  to  depend  upon  for  interpreting 
the  Scriptures, — thinks  her  Majesty,  but  does  not  say  so,-~ 
* 4 Commentary  on  the  Galatians,’  Chap.  iii. 


TEE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


357 


leaving  Father  Yota  to  his  reflections.”  Alas,  no,  Queen 
Sophie,  neither  old  St.  Jerome’s,  nor  any  other  human  lips 
nor  mind,  may  be  depended  upon  in  that  function  ; but  only 
the  Eternal  Sophia,  the  Power  of  God  and  the  Wisdom  of 
God  : yet  this  you  may  see  of  your  old  interpreter,  that  he 
is  wholly  open,  iunocent,  and  true,  and  that,  through  such  a 
person,  whether  forgetful  of  his  author,  or  hurried  by  his 
scribe,  it  is  more  than  probable  you  may  hear  what  Heaven 
knows  to  be  best  for  you  ; and  extremely  improbable  you 
should  take  the  least  harm, — while  by  a careful  and  cunning 
master  in  the  literary  art,  reticent  of  his  doubts,  and  dexterous 
in  his  sayings,  any  number  of  prejudices  or  errors  might  be 
proposed  to  you  acceptably,  or  even  fastened  in  you  fatally, 
though  all  the  while  you  were  not  the  least  required  to  con- 
fide in  his  inspiration. 

48.  For  indeed,  the  only  confidence,  and  the  only  safety 
w hich  in  such  matters  we  can  either  hold  or  hope,  are  in  our 
own  desire  to  be  rightly  guided,  and  willingness  to  followr  in 
simplicity  the  guidance  granted.  But  all  our  conceptions  and 
reasonings  on  the  subject  of  inspiration  have  been  disordered 
by  our  habit,  first  of  distinguishing  falsely — or  at  least  need- 
lessly— between  inspiration  of  words  and  of  acts  ; and  sec- 
ondly by  our  attribution  of  inspired  strength  or  wisdom  to 
some  persons  or  some  writers  only,  instead  of  to  the  whole 
body  of  believers,  in  so  far  as  they  are  partakers  of  the  Grace 
of  Christ,  the  Love  of  God,  and  the  Fellowship  of  the  Holy 
Ghost.  In  the  degree  in  which  every  Christian  receives,  or  re- 
fuses, the  several  gifts  expressed  by  that  general  benediction, 
he  enters  or  is  cast  out  from  the  inheritance  of  the  saints,— in 
the  exact  degree  in  which  he  denies  the  Christ,  angers  the 
Father,  and  grieves  the  Holy  Spirit,  he  becomes  uninspired 
or  unholy, — and  in  the  measure  in  which  he  trusts  Christ, 
obeys  the  Father,  and  consents  with  the  Spirit,  he  becomes 
inspired  in  feeling,  act,  word,  and  reception  of  word,  accord- 
ing to  the  capacities  of  his  nature.  He  is  not  gifted  with 
higher  ability,  nor  called  into  new  offices,  but  enabled  to 
use  his  granted  natural  powers,  in  their  appointed  place, 
to  the  best  purpose.  A child  is  inspired  as  a child,  and 


358 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US” 


a maiden  as  a maiden  ; the  weak,  even  in  their  weakness, 
and  the  wise,  only  in  their  hour. 

That  is  the  simply  determinable  theory  of  the  inspiration 
of  all  true  members  of  the  Church  ; its  truth  can  only  be 
known  by  proving  it  in  trial : but  I believe  there  is  no  record 
of  any  man’s  having  tried  and  declared  it  vain.* 

49.  Beyond  this  theory  of  general  inspiration,  there  is  that 

* Compare  the  closing  paragraph  in  p.  45  of  1 The  Shrine  of  the  Slaves  * 
Strangely,  as  I revise  this  page  for  press,  a slip  is  sent  me  from  ‘ The 
Christian’  newspaper,  in  which  the  comment  of  the  orthodox  evangeli- 
cal editor  may  he  hereafter  representative  to  us  of  the  heresy  of  his 
sect ; in  its  last  audacity,  actually  opposing  the  power  of  the  Spirit  to 
the  work  of  Christ.  (I  only  wish  I had  been  at  Matlock,  and  heard  the 
kind  physician’s  sermon.) 

“An  interesting  and  somewhat  unusual  sight  was  seen  in  Derbyshire 
oil  Saturday  last— two  old-fashioned  Friends,  dressed  in  the  original 
garb  of  the  Quakers,  preaching  on  the  roadside  to  a large  and  attentive 
audience  in  Matlock.  One  of  them,  who  is  a doctor  in  good  practice  in 
the  county,  by  name  Dr.  Charles  A.  Fox,  made  a powerful  and  effect- 
ive appeal  to  his  audience  to  see  to  it  that  each  one  was  living  in  obedi- 
ence to  the  light  of  the  Holy  Spirit  within.  Christ  within  was  the  hope 
of  glory,  and  it  was  as  He  was  followed  in  the  ministry  of  the  Spirit 
that  we  were  saved  by  Him,  who  became  thus  to  each  the  author  and 
finisher  of  faith.  He  cautioned  his  hearers  against  building  their  house 
on  the  sand  by  believing  in  the  free  and  easy  Gospel  so  commonly 
preached  to  the  wayside  hearers,  as  if  we  were  saved  by  ‘ believing  ’ 
this  or  that.  Nothing  short  of  the  work  of  the  Holy  Ghost  in  the  soul 
of  each  one  could  save  us,  and  to  preach  anything  short  of  this  was 
simply  to  delude  the  simple  and  unwary  in  the  most  terrible  form. 

“ [It  would  be  unfair  to  criticise  an  address  from  so  brief  an  abstract, 
but  we  must  express  our  conviction  that  the  obedience  of  Christ  unto 
death,  the  death  of  the  Cross,  rather  than  the  woi’k  of  the  Spirit  in  us, 
is  the  good  tidings  for  sinful  men. — Ed.]  ” 

In  juxtaposition  with  this  editoral  piece  of  modern  British  press 
theology,  I will  simply  place  the  4th,  6th,  and  13th  verses  of  Homans 
viii.,  italicising  the  expressions  which  are  of  deepest  import,  and  al- 
ways neglected.  “That  the  righteousness  of  the  Law  might  be  fulfilled 
in  us,  who  walk  not  after  the  flesh,  but  after  the  Spirit.  . . . For  to  be 
carnally  minded , is  death,  but  to  be  spiritually  minded,  is  life,  and 
peace.  . . . For  if  ye  live  after  the  flesh,  ye  shall  die ; but  if  ye 
through  the  Spirit  do  mortify  the  deeds  of  the  body,  ye  shall  live.” 

It  would  be  well  for  Christendom  if  the  Baptismal  service  explained 
what  it  professes  to  abjure. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


359 

of  especial  call  and  command,  with  actual  dictation  of  the 
deeds  to  be  done  or  words  to  be  said.  I will  enter  at  present 
into  no  examination  of  the  evidences  of  such  separating  influ- 
ence ; it  is  not  claimed  by  the  Fathers  of  the  Church,  either  for 
themselves,  or  even  for  the  entire  body  of  the  Sacred  writers, 
but  only  ascribed  to  certain  passages  dictated  at  certain  times 
for  special  needs : and  there  is  no  possibility  of  attaching 
the  idea  of  infallible  truth  to  any  form  of  human  language  in 
which  even  these  exceptional  passages  have  been  delivered 
to  us.  Bat  this  is  demonstrably  true  of  the  entire  volume  of 
them,  as  we  have  it,  and  read, — each  of  us  as  it  may  be  ren- 
dered in  his  native  tongue  ; that,  however  mingled  with  mys- 
tery which  we  are  not  required  to  unravel,  or  difficulties  which 
we  should  be  insolent  in  desiring  to  solve,  it  contains  plain 
teaching  for  men  of  every  rank  of  soul  and  state  in  life,  which 
so  far  as  they  honestly  and  implicitly  obey,  they  will  be  happy 
and  innocent  to  the  utmost  powers  of  their  nature,  and  capa- 
ble of  victory  over  all  adversities,  whether  of  temptation  or 
pain. 

50.  Indeed,  the  Psalter  alone,  which  practically  was  the 
service  book  of  the  Church  for  many  ages,  contains  merely  in 
the  first  half  of  it  the  sum  of  personal  and  social  wisdom. 
The  1st,  8th,  12th,  14th,  15th,  19th,  23rd,  and  24th  psalms, 
well  learned  and  believed,  are  enough  for  all  personal  guid- 
ance ; the  48th,  72nd,  and  75th,  have  in  them  the  law  and 
the  prophecy  of  all  righteous  government ; and  ever}7  real  tri- 
umph of  natural  science  is  anticipated  in  the  104th. 

51  For  the  contents  of  the  entire  volume,  consider  what 
other  group  of  historic  and  didactic  literature  has  a range 
comparable  with  it.  There  are — 

L The  stories  of  the  Fall  and  of  the  Flood,  the  grandest 
human  traditions  founded  on  a true  horror  of  sin. 

II.  The  story  of  the  Patriarchs,  of  which  the  effective  truth 
is  visible  to  this  day  in  the  polity  of  the  Jewish  and  Arab 
races. 

III.  The  story  of  Moses,  with  the  results  of  that  tradition 
in  the  moral  law  of  all  the  civilized  world. 

IV.  The  story  of  the  Kings — virtually  that  of  all  Kingkood, 


360 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US. 


in  David,  and  of  all  Philosoph}',  in  Solomon : culminating  in 
the  Psalms  and  Proverbs,  with  the  still  more  close  and  prac- 
tical wisdom  of  Ecclesiasticus  and  the  Son  of  Sirach. 

V.  The  story  of  the  Prophets —virtually  that  of  the  deepest 
mystery,  tragedy,  and  permanent  fate,  of  national  existence. 

VI.  The  story  of  Christ. 

VII.  The  moral  law  of  St.  John,  and  his  closing  Apocalypse 
of  its  fulfilment. 

Think,  if  you  can  match  that  table  of  contents  in  any  other 
— I do  not  say  ‘book ’ but  ‘ literature.’  Think,  so  far  as  it  is 
possible  for  any  of  us — either  adversary  or  defender  of  the 
faith — to  extricate  his  intelligence  from  the  habit  and  the 
association  of  moral  sentiment  based  upon  the  Bible,  what 
literature  could  have  taken  its  place,  or  fulfilled  its  function, 
though  every  library  in  the  world  had  remained  unravaged, 
and  every  teacher’s  truest  words  had  been  written  down? 

52.  I am  no  despiser  of  profane  literature.  So  far  from  it, 
that  I believe  no  interpretations  of  Greek  religion  have  ever 
been  so  affectionate,  none  of  Roman  religion  so  reverent,  as 
those  which  will  be  found  at  the  base  of  my  art  teaching,  and 
current  through  the  entire  body  of  my  works.  But  it  was 
from  the  Bible  that  I learned  the  symbols  of  Homer,  and  the 
faith  of  Horace  : the  duty  enforced  upon  me  in  early  youth 
of  reading  every  word  of  the  gospels  and  prophecies  as  if 
written  by  the  hand  of  God,  gave  me  the  habit  of  awed  atten- 
tion which  afterwards  made  many  passages  of  the  profane 
writers,  frivolous  to  an  irreligious  reader,  deeply  grave  to  me. 
How  far  my  mind  has  been  paralysed  by  the  faults  and  sorrow 
of  life, — how  far  short  its  knowledge  may  be  of  what  1 might 
have  known,  had  I more  faithfully  walked  in  the  light  I had, 
is  beyond  my  conjecture  or  confession  : but  as  I never  wrote 
for  my  own  pleasure  or  self-proclaiming,  I have  been  guarded, 
as  men  who  so  write  always  will  be,  from  errors  dangerous  to 
others  ; and  the  fragmentary  expressions  of  feeling  or  state- 
ments of  doctrine,  which  from  time  to  time  I have  been  able 
to  give,  will  be  found  now  by  an  attentive  reader  to  bind 
themselves  together  into  a general  system  of  interpretation 
of  Sacred  literature, — both  classic  and  Christian,  which  will 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


3G1 


enable  him  without  injustice  to  sympathize  in  the  faiths  of 
candid  and  generous  souls,  of  every  age  and  every  clime. 

53.  That  there  is  a Sacred  classic  literature,  running  parallel 
with  that  of  the  Hebrews,  and  coalescing  iu  the  symbolic 
legends  of  medissval  Christendom,  is  shown  in  the  most  ten- 
der and  impressive  way  by  the  independent,  yet  similar,  in- 
fluence of  Virgil  upon  Dante,  and  upon  Bishop  Gawaine 
Douglas.  At  earlier  dates,  the  teaching  of  every  master 
trained  in  the  Eastern  schools  was  necessarily  grafted  on  the 
wisdom  of  the  Greek  mythology  ; and  thus  the  story  of  the 
Nemean  Lion,  with  the  aid  of  Athena  in  its  conquest,  is  the 
real  root-stock  of  the  legend  of  St.  Jerome’s  companion,  con- 
queried  by  the  healing  gentleness  of  the  Spirit  of  Life. 

54.  I call  it  a legend  only.  Whether  Heracles  ever  slew,  or 
St.  Jerome  ever  cherished,  the  wild  or  wounded  creature,  is 
of  no  moment  to  us  in  learning  what  the  Greeks  meant  by 
their  vase-outlines  of  the  great  contest,  or  the  Christian 
painters  by  their  fond  insistance  on  the  constancy  of  the 
Lion-friend.  Former  tradition,  in  the  story  of  Samson, — of 
the  disobedient  Prophet, — of  David’s  first  inspired  victory, 
and  finally  of  the  miracle  wrought  in  the  defence  of  the  most 
favoured  and  most  faithful  of  the  greater  Prophets,  runs  al- 
ways parallel  in  symbolism  with  the  Dorian  fable  : but  the 
legend  of  St.  Jerome  takes  up  the  prophecy  of  the  Millen- 
nium, and  foretells,  with  the  Cumsean  Sibyl,  and  with.  Isaiah, 
a day  when  the  Fear  of  Man  shall  be  laid  in  benediction,  not 
enmity,  on  inferior  beings, — when  they  shall  not  hurt  nor 
destroy  in  all  the  holy  Mountain,  and  the  Peace  of  the  Earth 
shall  be  as  far  removed  from  its  present  sorrow,  as  the  present 
gloriously  animate  universe  from  the  nascent  desert,  whose 
deeps  were  the  place  of  dragons,  and  its  mountains,  domes 
of  fire. 

Of  that  day  knoweth  no  man  ; but  the  Kingdom  of  God  is 
already  come  to  those  who  have  tamed  in  their  own  hearts 
what  wras  rampant  of  the  lower  nature,  and  have  learned  to 
cherish  what  is  lovely  and  human,  in  the  wandering  children 
of  the  clouds  and  fields. 

Avallon,  28 th  August , 1882. 


362 


64  OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  VS. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

INTERPRETATIONS. 

1.  It  is  the  admitted  privilege  of  a eustode  who  loves  his 
cathedral  to  depreciate,  in  its  comparison,  all  the  other  cathe- 
drals of  his  country  that  resemble,  and  all  the  edifices  on  the 
globe  that  differ  from  it.  But  I love  too  many  cathedrals — - 
though  I have  never  had  the  happiness  of  becoming  the  cus- 
tode  of  even  one — to  permit  myself  the  easy  and  faithful  ex- 
ercise of  the  privilege  in  question  ; and  I must  vindicate  my 
candour,  and  my  judgment,  in  the  outset,  by  confessing  that 
the  cathedral  of  Amiens  has  nothing  to  boast  of  in  the  way  of 
towers, — that  its  central  fleche  is  merely  the  pretty  caprice  of 
a village  carpenter, — that  the  total  structure  is  in  dignity  in- 
ferior to  Chartres,  in  sublimity  to  Beauvais,  in  decorative 
splendour  to  Rheims,  and  in  loveliness  of  figure-sculpture  to 
Bourges.  It  has  nothing  like  the  artful  pointing  and  mould- 
ing of  the  arcades  of  Salisbury — nothing  of  the  might  of  Dur- 
ham ; — no  Daedalian  inlaying  like  Florence,  no  glow  of  mythic 
fantasy  like  Verona.  And  yet,  in  all,  and  more  than  these, 
ways,  outshone  or  overpowered,  the  cathedral  of  Amiens  de- 
serves the  name  given  it  by  M.  Viollet  le  Due — 

“ The  Parthenon  of  Gothic  Architecture.”  * 

2.  Of  Gothic,  mind  you  ; Gothic  clear  of  Roman  tradition, 
and  of  Arabian  taint  ; Gothic  pure,  authoritative,  unsurpass- 
able, and  unaccusable  ; its  proper  principles  of  structure  being 
once  understood  and  admitted. 

No  well-educated  traveller  is  now  without  some  conscious- 
ness of  the  meaning  of  what  is  commonly  and  rightly  called 
44  purity  of  style,”  in  the  modes  of  art  which  have  been  prac- 
tised by  civilized  nations  ; and  few  are  unaware  of  the  dis- 
tinctive aims  and  character  of  Gothic.  The  purpose  of  a good 

* Of  French  Architecture,  accurately,  in  the  place  quoted,  “Diction- 
ary of  Architecture,”  vol.  i.  p.  71  ; but  in  the  article  “ Cathedrale,”  it 
is  called  (vol.  ii.  p.  330)  “ IMglise  ogivale  par  excellence.” 


TEE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


Gothic  builder  was  to  raise,  with  the  native  stone  of  the  place 
he  had  to  build  in,  an  edifice  as  high  and  as  spacious  as  he 
could,  with  calculable  and  visible  security,  in  no  protracted 
and  wearisome  time,  and  with  no  monstrous  or  oppressive 
compulsion  of  human  labour. 

He  did  not  wish  to  exhaust  in  the  pride  of  a single  city  the 
energies  of  a generation,  or  the  resources  of  a kingdom ; he 
built  for  Amiens  with  the  strength  and  the  exchequer  of 
Amiens  ; with  chalk  from  the  cliffs  of  the  Somme,*  and  under 
the  orders  of  two  successive  bishops,  one  of  whom  directed 
the  foundations  of  the  edifice,  and  the  other  gave  thanks  in  it 
for  its  completion.  His  object,  as  a designer,  in  common 
with  all  the  sacred  builders  of  his  time  in  the  North,  was  to 
admit  as  much  light  into  the  building  as  was  consistent  with 
the  comfort  of  it ; to  make  its  structure  intelligibly  admirable, 
but  not  curious  or  confusing  ; and  to  enrich  and  enforce  the 
understood  structure  with  ornament  sufficient  for  its  beauty, 
yet  yielding  to  no  wanton  enthusiasm  in  expenditure,  nor  in- 
solent in  giddy  or  selfish  ostentation  of  skill  ; and  finally,  to 
make  the  external  sculpture  of  its  walls  and  gates  at  once  an 
alphabet  and  epitome  of  the  religion,  by  the  knowledge  and 
inspiration  of  which  an  acceptable  worship  might  be  rendered, 
within  those  gates,  to  the  Lord  whose  Fear  was  in  His  Holy 
Temple,  and  whose  seat  was  in  Heaven. 

3.  It  is  not  easy  for  the  citizen  of  the  modern  aggregate  of 
bad  building,  and  ill-living  held  in  check  by  constables,  which 
ice  call  a town, — of  which  the  widest  streets  are  devoted  by 

* It  was  a universal  principle  witli  the  French  builders  of  the  great 
ages  to  use  the  stones  of  their  quarries  as  they  lay  in  the  bed ; if  the 
beds  were  thick,  the  stones  were  used  of  their  full  thickness — if  thin, 
of  their  necessary  thinness,  adjusting  them  with  beautiful  care  to  direc- 
tions of  thrust  and  weight.  The  natural  blocks  were  never  sawn,  only 
squared  into  fitting,  the  whole  native  strength  and  crystallization  of  the 
stone  being  thus  kept  unflawed — “ ne  declouUant  jamais  une  pierre, 
Cette  methode  est  excell  elite,  elle  conserve  a,  la  pierre  toute  sa  force 
naturelle, — tous  ses  moyens  de  resistance.”  See  M.  Violist  le  Due, 
Article  “Construction”  (Materiaux),  vol.  iv.  p.  129.  He  adds  the 
very  notable  fact  that,  to  this  day}  in  seventy  departments  of  France , the. 
use  of  the  stone-mo  is  unknown. 


364 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US. 


consent  to  the  encouragement  of  vice,  ancl  the  narrow  ones  ta 
the  concealment  of  misery, — not  easy,  I say,  for  the  citizen  of 
any  such  mean  city  to  understand  the  feeling  of  a burgher  of 
the  Christian  ages  to  his  cathedral.  For  him,  the  quite  simply 
and  frankly-believed  text,  “ Where  two  or  three  are  gathered 
in  My  name,  there  am  I in  the  midst  of  them,”  was  expanded 
into  the  wider  promise  to  many  honest  and  industrious  per- 
sons gathered  in  His  name — “ They  shall  be  my  people  and  I 
will  be  their  God  ; ” — deepened  in  his  reading  of  it,  by  some 
lovely  local  and  simply  affectionate  faith  that  Christ,  as  he  was 
a Jew  among  Jews,  and  a Galilean  among  Galileans,  was  also, 
in  his  nearness  to  any — even  the  poorest — group  of  disciples, 
as  one  of  their  nation  ; and  that  their  own  “ Beau  Christ 
d’ Amiens  ” was  as  true  a compatriot  to  them  as  if  He  had  been 
born  of  a Picard  maiden. 

4.  It  is  to  be  remembered,  however — and  this  is  a theologi- 
cal point  on  which  depended  much  of  the  structural  develop- 
ment of  the  northern  basilicas — that  the  part  of  the  building 
in  which  the  Divine  presence  was  believed  to  be  constant,  as 
in  the  Jewish  Holy  of  Holies,  was  only  the  enclosed  choir ; 
in  front  of  which  the  aisles  and  transepts  might  become  the 
King’s  Hall  of  Justice,  as  in  the  presence-chamber  of  Christ ; 
and  whose  high  altar  was  guarded  always  from  the  surround- 
ing eastern  aisles  by  a screen  of  the  most  finished  workman- 
ship ; while  from  those  surrounding  aisles  branched  off  a 
series  of  radiating  chapels  or  cells,  each  dedicated  to  some 
separate  saint.  This  conception  of  the  company  of  Christ 
with  His  saints,  (the  eastern  chapel  of  all  being  the  Virgin’s,) 
was  at  the  root  of  the  entire  disposition  of  the  apse  with  its 
supporting  and  dividing  buttresses  and  piers ; and  the  archi- 
tectural form  can  never  be  well  delighted  in,  unless  in  some 
sympathy  with  the  spiritual  imagination  out  of  which  it  rose. 
We  talk  foolishly  and  feebly  of  symbols  and  types  : in  old 
Christian  architecture,  every  part  is  literal : the  cathedral  is 
for  its  builders  the  House  of  God  ; — it  is  surrounded,  like  an 
earthly  king’s,  with  minor  lodgings  for  the  servants  ; and  the 
glorious  carvings  of  the  exterior  walls  and  interior  wood  of 
the  choir,  which  an  English  rector  would  almost  instinctively 


TIIE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


365 


thick  of  as  done  for  the  glorification  of  the  canons,  was  indeed 
the  Amienois  carpenter’s  way  of  making  his  Master-carpenter 
comfortable,* — nor  less  of  showing  his  own  native  and  insu* 
perable  virtue  of  carpenter,  before  God  and  man. 

5.  Whatever  you  wish  to  see,  or  are  forced  to  leave  unseen, 
at  Amiens,  if  the  overwhelming  responsibilities  of  your  exist- 
ence, and  the  inevitable  necessities  of  precipitate  locomotion 
in  their  fulfilment,  have  left  you  so  much  as  one  quarter  of 
an  hour,  not  out  of  breath — for  the  contemplation  of  the 
capital  of  Picardy,  give  it  wholly  to  the  cathedral  choir.  Aisles 
and  porches,  lancet  windows  and  roses,  you  can  see  elsewhere 
as  well  as  here — but  such  carpenter’s  work,  you  cannot.  It 
is  late, — fully  developed  flamboyant  just  past  the  fifteenth 
century — and  has  some  Flemish  stolidity  mixed  with  the 
playing  French  fire  of  it  ; but  wood-carving  was  the  Picard’s 
joy  from  his  youth  up,  and,  so  far  as  I know,  there  is  nothing 
else  so  beautiful  cut  out  of  the  goodly  trees  of  the  world. 

Sweet  and  young-grained  wood  it  is  : oak,  trained  and 
chosen  for  such  work,  sound  now  as  four  hundred  years  since. 
Under  the  carver’s  hand  it  seems  to  cut  like  clay,  to  fold  like 
silk,  to  grow  like  living  branches,  to  leap  like  living  flame. 
Canopy  crowning  canopy,  pinnacle  piercing  pinnacle — it  shoots 
and  wreaths  itself  into  an  enchanted  glade,  inextricable,  im- 
perishable, fuller  of  leafage  than  any  forest,  and  fuller  of 
story  than  any  book.4- 

* The  philosophic  reader  is  quite  welcome  to  ‘detect’  and  ‘expose’ 
as  many  carnal  motives  as  he  pleases,  besides  the  good  ones, — competi- 
tion with  neighbour  Beauvais — comfort  to  sleepy  heads — solace  to  fat. 
sides,  and  the  like.  He  will  find  at  last  that  no  quantity  of  competition 
or  comfort  seeking  will  do  anything  the  like  of  this  carving  now; — still 
less  his  own  philosophy,  whatever  its  species : and  that  it  was  indeed 
the  little  mustard-seed  of  faith  in  the  heart,  with  a very  notable  quan- 
tity of  honesty  besides  in  the  habit  and  disposition,  that  made  all  the 
rest  grow  together  for  good. 

f Arnold  Boulin,  master-joiner  (menuisier)  at  Amiens,  solicited  the 
enterprise,  and  obtained  it  in  the  first  months  of  the  year  1508.  A con- 
tract was  drawn  and  an  agreement  made  with  him  for  the  construction 
of  one  hundred  and  twenty  stalls  with  historical  subjects,  high  back- 
ings, crownings  and  pyramidal  canopies.  It  was  agreed  that  the  principal 


366 


" OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US." 


6.  I Lave  never  been  able  to  make  up  my  mind  which  was 
really  the  best  way  of  approaching  the  cathedral  for  the  first 
time.  If  you  have  plenty  of  leisure  and  the  day  is  fine,  and 
you  are  not  afraid  of  an  hour’s  walk,  the  really  right  thing  to 
do  is  to  walk  down  the  main  street  of  the  old  town,  and  across 

executor  should  have  seven  sons  of  Tournay  (a  little  less  than  the  sou  of 
France)  a day,  for  himself  and  his  apprentice,  (threepence  a day  the 
two — say  a shilling  a week  the  master,  and  sixpence  a week  the  man,) 
and  for  the  superintendence  of  the  whole  work,  twelve  crowns  a year, 
at  the  rate  of  twenty-four  sous  the  crown  ; (i i.e .,  twelve  shillings  a year). 
The  salary  of  the  simple  workman  was  only  to  be  three  sous  a day. 
For  the  sculptures  and  histories  of  the  seats,  the  bargain  was  made 
separately  with  Antoine  Avernier,  image-cutter,  residing  at  Amiens,  at 
the  rate  of  thirty -two  sous  (sixteen  pence)  the  piece.  Most  of  the  wood 
came  from  Clermont  en  Beauvoisis,  near  Amiens ; the  finest,  for  the 
bas-reliefs,  from  Holland,  by  St.  Valery  and  Abbeville.  The  Chapter 
appointed  four  of  its  own  members  to  superintend  the  work  : Jean  Du- 
mas, Jean  Fabres,  Pierre  Vuaille,  and  Jean  Lenglaclie,  to  whom  my 
authors  (canons  both)  attribute  the  choice  of  subjects,  the  placing  of 
them,  and  the  initiation  of  the  workmen  ‘ au  sens  veritable  et  plus 
eleve  de  la  Bible  ou  des  legendes,  et  portant  quelque  fois  ie  simple 
savoir-faire  de  Pouvrier  jusqu’a  la  hauteur  du  genie  du  theologien.’ 

Without  pretending  to  apportion  the  credit  of  savoir-faire  and  theol- 
ogy in  the  business,  we  have  only  to  observe  that  the  whole  company, 
master,  apprentices,  workmen,  image-cutter,  and  four  canons,  got  well 
into  traces,  and  set  to  work  on  the  3rd  of  July,  1508,  in  the  great  hall 
of  the  evecbe,  which  was  to  be  the  workshop  and  studio  during  the 
whole  time  of  the  business.  In  the  following  year,  another  menuisier, 
Alexander  Huet,  was  associated  with  the  body,  to  carry  on  the  stalls  on 
the  right  hand  of  the  choir,  while  Arnold  Boulin  went  on  with  those 
on  the  left.  Arnold,  leaving  his  new  associate  in  command  for  a time, 
went  to  Beauvais  and  St.  Biquier,  to  see  the  woodwork  there  ; and  in 
July  of  1511  both  the  masters  went  to  Rouen  together,  ‘pour  etudier 
les  chaires  de  la  cathedrale.’  The  year  before,  also,  two  Franciscans, 
monks  of  Abbeville,  ‘ expert  and  renowned  in  working  in  wood,’  had 
been  called  by  the  Amiens  chapter  to  give  their  opinion  on  things  in 
progress,  and  had  each  twenty  sous  for  his  opinion,  and  travelling  ex- 
penses. 

In  1516,  another  and  an  important  name  appears  on  the  accounts,— 
that  of  Jean  Trupin,  ‘ a simple  workman  at  the  wages  of  three  sous  a 
day,’  but  doubtless  a good  and  spirited  carver,  whose  true  portrait  it  is 
without  doubt,  and  by  his  own  hand,  that  forms  the  elbow-rest  of  the 
85th  stall  (right  baud,  nearest  apse),  beneath  which  is  cut  his  name 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


367 


the  river,  and  quite  out  to  the  chalk  hill  * out  of  which  the 
citadel  is  half  quarried — half  walled  ; — and  walk  to  the  top  of 
that,  and  look  down  into  the  citadel’s  dry  * ditch,’ — or,  more 
truly,  dry  valley  of  death,  which  is  about  as  deep  as  a glen  in 
Derbyshire,  (or,  more  precisely,  the  upper  part  of  the  ‘ Happy 
Valley  ’ at  Oxford,  above  Lower  Hincksey,)  and  thence  across 
to  the  cathedral  and  ascending  slopes  of  the  city  ; so,  you  will 

JHAN  TRUPIN,  and  again  under  tlie  92nd  stall,  with  the  added  wish, 
4 Jan  Trupin,  God  take  care  of  thee  ’ ( Dieu  te  pourvoie). 

The  entire  work  was  ended  on  St.  John’s  Day,  1522,  without  (so  far 
as  we  hear)  any  manner  of  interruption  by  dissension,  death,  dishonesty, 
or  incapacity,  among  its  fellow-workmen,  master  or  servant.  And  the 
accounts  being  audited  by  four  members  of  the  Chapter,  it  was  found 
that  the  total  expense  was  9,488  livres,  11  sous,  and  3 obols  (decimes), 
or  474  napoleons,  11  sous,  3 decimes  of  modern  French  money,  or 
roughly  four  hundred  sterling  English  pounds. 

For  which  sum,  you  perceive,  a company  of  probably  six  or  eight 
good  workmen,  old  and  young,  had  been  kept  merry  and  busy  for 
fourteen  years  ; and  this  that  you  see — left  for  substantial  result  and 
gift  to  you. 

I have  not  examined  the  carvings  so  as  to  assign,  with  any  decision, 
the  several  masters’  work;  but  in  general  the  flower  and  leaf  design  in 
the  traceries  will  be  by  the  two  head  menuisiers,  and  their  apprentices  • 
the  elaborate  Scripture  histories  by  Avernier,  with  variously  completing 
incidental  grotesque  by  Trupin  ; and  the  joining  and  fitting  by  the  com- 
mon workmen.  No  nails  are  used, — all  is  morticed,  and  so  beautifully 
that  the  joints  have  not  moved  to  this  day,  and  are  still  almost  imper- 
ceptible. The  four  terminal  pyramids  ‘ you  might  take  for  giant  pines 
forgotten  for  six  centuries  on  the  soil  where  the  church  was  built  ; they 
might  be  looked  on  at  first  as  a wild  luxury  of  sculpture  and  hollow 
traceries — but  examined  in  analysis  they  are  marvels  of  order  and  sys- 
tem in  construction,  uniting  all  the  lightness,  strength,  and  grace  of  the 
most  renowned  spires  in  the  last  epoch  of  the  Middle  ages.’ 

The  above  particulars  are  all  extracted — or  simply  translated,  out  of 
the  excellent  description  of  the  “Stalles  et  les  Clotures  du  Choeur'’  of 
the  Cathedral  of  Amiens,  by  MM.  les  Chanoines  Jourdain  et  Duval 
(Amiens  Yv.  Alfred  Caron,  1867).  The  accompanying  lithographic  out- 
lines are  exceedingly  good,  and  the  reader  will  find  the  entire  series  of 
subjects  indicated  with  precision  and  brevity,  both  for  the  woodwork 
and  the  external  veil  of  the  choir,  of  which  1 have  no  room  to  speak  in 
this  traveller’s  summary. 

* The  strongest  and  finally  to  be  defended  part  of  the  earliest  city 
was  on  this  height. 


868 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US. ” 


understand  tlie  real  height  and  relation  of  tower  and  town  : — ■ 
then,  returning,  find  your  way  to  the  Mount  Zion  of  it  by 
any  narrow  cross  streets  and  chance  bridges  you  can — the 
more  winding  and  dirty  the  streets,  the  better ; and  whether 
you  come  first  on  west  front  or  apse,  you  will  think  them 
worth  all  the  trouble  you  have  had  to  reach  them. 

7.  But  if  the  day  be  dismal,  as  it  may  sometimes  be,  even 
in  France,  of  late  years, — or  if  you  cannot  or  will  not  walk, 
which  may  also  chance,  for  all  our  athletics  and  lawn-tennis, 
— or  if  you  must  really  go  to  Paris  this  afternoon,  and  only 
mean  to  see  all  you  can  in  an  hour  or  two, — then,  supposing 
that,  notwithstanding  these  weaknesses,  you  are  still  a nice 
sort  of  person,  for  whom  it  is  of  some  consequence  which  way 
you  come  at  a pretty  thing,  or  begin  to  look  at  it — I thirds 
the  best  way  is  to  walk  from  the  Hotel  de  France  or  the 
Place  de  Perigord,  up  the  Street  of  Three  Pebbles,  towards 
the  railway  station — stopping  a little  as  you  go,  so  as  to  get 
into  a cheerful  temper,  and  buying  some  bonbons  or  tarts  for 
the  children  in  one  of  the  charming  patissiers’  shops  on  the 
left.  Just  pass  them,  ask  for  the  theatre  ; and  just  past  that, 
you  will  find,  also  on  the  left,  three  open  arches,  through  which 
you  can  turn,  passing  the  Palais  de  Justice,  and  go  straight 
up  to  the  south  transept,  which  has  really  something  about  it 
to  please  everybody.  It  is  simple  and  severe  at  the  bottom, 
and  daintily  traceried  and  pinnacled  at  the  top,  and  yet  seems 
all  of  a piece — though  it  isn’t — and  everybody  must  like  the 
taper  and  transparent  fretwork  of  the  fleche  above,  which 
seems  to  bend  to  the  west  wind, — though  it  doesn’t — at  least, 
the  bending  is  a long  habit,  gradually  yielded  into,  with  gain- 
ing grace  and  submissiveness,  during  the  last  three  hundred 
years.  And,  coming  quite  up  to  the  porch,  everybody  must 
like  the  pretty  French  Madonna  in  the  middle  of  it,  with  her 
head  a little  aside,  and  her  nimbus  switched  a little  aside  too, 
like  a becoming  bonnet.  A Madonna  in  decadence  she  is, 
though,  for  all,  or  rather  by  reason  of  all,  her  prettiness,  and 
her  gay  soubrette’s  smile  ; and  she  has  no  business  there, 
neither,  for  ibis  is  St.  Honore’s  porch,  not  hers  ; and  grim  and 
grey  St.  Honore  used  to  stand  there  to  receive  you, — he  is 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


369 


banished  now  to  the  north  porch,  where  nobody  ever  goes  in. 
This  was  done  long  ago,  in  the  fourteenth-century  days,  when 
the  people  first  began  to  find  Christianity  too  serious,  and  de- 
vised a merrier  faith  for  France,  and  would  have  bright- 
glancing,  soubrette  Madonnas  everywhere — letting  their  own 
dark-eyed  Joan  of  Arc  be  burnt  for  a witch.  And  thencefor- 
ward, things  went  their  merry  way,  straight  on,  4 9a  allait,  9a 
ira,’  to  the  merriest  days  of  the  guillotine. 

But  they  could  still  carve,  in  the  fourteenth  century,  and 
the  Madonna  and  her  hawthorn-blossom  lintel  are  worth  your 
looking  at, — much  more  the  field  above,  of  sculpture  as  deli- 
cate and  more  calm,  which  tells  St.  Honore’s  own  story,  little 
talked  of  now  in  his  Parisian  faubourg. 

8.  I will  not  keep  you  just  now  to  tell  St.  Honore’s  story — - 
(only  too  glad  to  leave  you  a little  curious  about  it,  if  it  were 
possible)  * — for  certainly  you  will  be  impatient  to  go  into  the 
church  ; and  cannot  enter  it  to  better  advantage  than  by  this 
door.  For  all  cathedrals  of  any  mark  have  nearly  the  same 
effect  when  you  enter  at  the  west  door  ; but  I know  no  other 
wdiicli  shows  so  much  of  its  nobleness  from  the  south  interior 
transept ; the  opposite  rose  being  of  exquisite  fineness  in  tra- 
cery, and  lovely  in  lustre  ; and  the  shafts  of  the  transept  aisles 
forming  wonderful  groups  with  those  of  the  choir  and  nave  ; 
also,  the  apse  shows  its  height  better,  as  it  opens  to  you  when 
you  advance  from  the  transept  into  the  mid-nave,  than  when 
it  is  seen  at  once  from  the  west  end  of  the  nave  ; where  it  is 
just  possible  for  an  irreverent  person  rather  to  think  the  nave 
narrow,  than  the  apse  high.  Therefore,  if  you  let  me  guide 
you,  go  in  at  this  south  transept  door,  (and  put  a sou  into 
every  beggar’s  box  who  asks  it  there, — it  is  none  of  your  busi- 
ness whether  they  should  be  there  or  not,  nor  whether  they 
deserve  to  have  the  sou, — be  sure  only  that  you  yourself  de- 
serve to  have  it  to  give  ; and  give  it  prettily,  and  not  as  if  it 
burnt  your  fingers).  Then,  being  once  inside,  take  what  first 
sensation  and  general  glimpse  of  it  pleases  you — promising 
the  custode  to  come  back  to  see  it  properly  ; (only  then,  mind 

*See,  however,  pages  32  and  130  (§§  36,  112-114)  of  the  octavo  edi- 
tion of  ‘The  Two  Paths,’ 


370 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US" 


you  keep  the  promise),  and  in  this  first  quarter  of  an  hour, 
seeing  only  what  fancy  bid  you — but  at  least,  as  I said,  the 
apse  from  mid-nave,  and  all  the  traverses  of  the  building,  from 
its  centre.  Then  you  will  know,  when  you  go  outside  again, 
what  the  architect  "was  working  for,  and  what  his  buttresses 
and  traceries  mean.  For  the  outside  of  a French  cathedral, 
except  for  its  sculpture,  is  always  to  be  thought  of  as  the 
wrong  side  of  the  stuff,  in  which  you  find  how  the  threads  go 
that  produce  the  inside  or  right-side  pattern.  And  if  you 
have  no  wonder  in  you  for  that  choir  and  its  encompassing 
circlet  of  light,  when  you  look  up  into  it  from  the  cross-cen- 
tre, you  need  not  travel  farther  in  search  of  cathedrals,  for 
the  waiting-room  of  any  station  is  a better  place  for  you  ; — 
but,  if  it  amaze  you  and  delight  you  at  first,  then,  the  more 
you  know  of  it,  the  more  it  will  amaze.  For  it  is  not  possible 
for  imagination  and  mathematics  together,  to  do  anything 
nobler  or  stronger  than  that  procession  of  window,  with  ma- 
terial of  glass  and  stone — nor  anything  which  shall  look  loftier, 
with  so  temperate  and  prudent  measure  of  actual  loftiness. 

9.  From  the  pavement  to  the  keystone  of  its  vault  is  but 
132  French  feet — about  150  English.  Think  only — you  who 
have  been  in  Switzerland, — the  Staubbacli  fails  nine  hundred ! 
Nay,  Dover  cliff  under  the  castle,  just  at  the  end  of  the  Ma- 
rine Parade,  is  twice  as  high ; and  the  little  cockneys  parad- 
ing to  military  polka  on  the  asphalt  below,  think  themselves 
about  as  tall  as  it,  I suppose, — nay,  what  with  their  little 
lodgings  and  stodgings  and  podgings  about  it,  they  have 
managed  to  make  it  look  no  bigger  than  a moderate-sized 
limekiln.  Yet  it  is  twice  the  height  of  Amiens’  apse  ! — and 
it  takes  good  building,  with  only  such  bits  of  chalk  as  one 
can  quarry  beside  Somme,  to  make  your  work  stand  half  that 
height,  for  six  hundred  years. 

10.  It  takes  good  building,  I say,  and  you  may  even  aver 
the  best — that  ever  was,  or  is  again  likely  for  many  a day  to 
be,  on  the  unquaking  and  fruitful  earth,  where  one  could  cal- 
culate on  a pillar’s  standing  fast,  once  well  set  up ; and  where 
aisles  of  aspen,  and  orchards  of  apple,  and  clusters  of  vine, 
gave  type  of  what  might  be  most  beautifully  made  sacred  in 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


371 


the  constancy  of  sculptured  stone.  From  the  unhewn  block 
set  on  end  in  the  Druid’s  Bethel,  to  this  Lord’s  House  and 
blue-vitrailed  gate  of  Heaven,  you  have  the  entire  course  and 
consummation  of  the  Northern  Religious  Builder’s  passion 
and  art. 

11.  But,  note  further — and  earnestly, — this  apse  of  Amiens 
is  not  only  the  best,  but  the  very  first  thing  done  perfectly  in 
its  manner,  by  Northern  Christendom.  In  pages  323  and 
327  of  the  sixth  volume  of  M.  Vioilet  le  Due,  you  will  find 
the  exact  history  of  the  development  of  these  traceries  through 
which  the  eastern  light  shines  on  you  as  you  stand,  from  the 
less  perfect  and  tentative  forms  of  Rheims  : and  so  momentary 
was  the  culmination  of  the  exact  rightness,  that  here,  from 
nave  to  transept — built  only  ten  years  later, — there  is  a little 
change,  not  towards  decline,  but  to  a not  quite  necessary  pre- 
cision. Where  decline  begins,  one  cannot,  among  the  lovely 
fantasies  that  succeeded,  exactly  say — -but  exactly,  and  indis- 
putably, we  know  that  this  apse  of  Amiens  is  the  first  virgin 
perfect  work, — Parthenon  also  in  that  sense, — of  Gothic  Archi- 
tecture. 

12.  Who  built  it,  shall  we  ask?  God,  and  Man, — is  the 
first  and  most  true  answer.  The  stars  in  their  courses  built 
it,  and  the  Nations.  Greek  Athena  labours  here — and  Roman 
Father  Jove,  and  Guardian  Mars.  The  Gaul  labours  here, 
and  the  Frank  : knightly  Norman, — mighty  Ostrogoth, — and 
'wasted  anchorite  of  Idumea. 

The  actual  Man  who  built  it  scarcely  cared  to  tell  you  he 
did  so  ; nor  do  the  historians  brag  of  him.  Any  quantity  of 
heraldries  of  knaves  and  faineants  you  may  find  in  what  they 
call  their  ‘ history  ’ : but  this  is  probably  the  first  time  you 
ever  read  the  name  of  Robert  of  Luzarches.  I say  he 
1 scarcely  cared  ’ — we  are  not  sure  that  he  cared  at  all.  He 
signed,  his  name  nowhere,  that  I can  hear  of.  You  may  per- 
haps find  some  recent  initials  cut  by  English  remarkable  visit- 
ors desirous  of  immortality,  here  and  there  about  the  edifice, 
but  Robert  the  builder — or  at  least  the  Master  of  building, 
cut  his  on  no  stone  of  it.  Only  when,  after  his  death,  the 


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“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US.” 


headstone  had  been  brought  forth  with  shouting,  Grace  unto 
it,  this  following  legend  was  written,  recording  all  who  had 
part  or  lot  in  the  labour,  within  the  middle  of  the  labyrinth 
then  inlaid  in  the  pavement  of  the  nave.  You  must  read  it 
trippingly  on  the  tongue  : it  was  rhymed  gaily  for  you  by 
pure  French  gaiety,  not  the  least  like  that  of  the  Theatre  de 
Folies. 

“ En  l’an  de  Grace  mil  deux  cent 
Et  vingt,  fu  l’ceuvre  de  cheens 
Premierement  encomenchie. 

A done  y ert  de  clieste  evesquie 
Evrart,  eveque  benis  ; 

Et,  Roy  de  France,  Loys 

Qui  fut  tils  Phelippe  le  Sage. 

Qui  maistre  y ert  de  1’ oeuvre 
Maistre  Robert  estoit  nomes 
Et  de  Luzarclies  surnomes. 

Maistre  Thomas  fu  aprks  lui 
De  Cormont.  Et  apres,  son  filz 
Maistre  Regnault,  qui  mestre 
Fist  a chest  point  chi  clieste  lectre 
Que  l’incarnation  valoit 
Treize  cent,  moins  douze,  en  faloit.” 

13.  I have  written  the  numerals  in  letters,  else  the  metre 
would  not  have  come  clear  ; they  were  really  in  figures,  thus, 
“n  c.  et  xx,”  xiii  c.  moins  xn.”  I quote  the  inscription  from 
M.  l’Abbe  Roze’s  admirable  little  book,  “Visite  a la  Catlie- 
drale  d’Amiens,” — Sup.  Lib.  de  Mgr.  1’Eveque  d’Amiens, 
1877, — which  every  grateful  traveller  should  buy,  for  I’m 
only  going  to  steal  a little  bit  of  it  here  and  there.  I only 
wish  there  had  been  a translation  of  the  legend  to  steal,  too  ; 
for  there  are  one  or  two  points,  both  of  idea  and  chronology, 
in  it,  that  I should  have  liked  the  Abbe’s  opinion  of. 

The  main  purport  of  the  rhyme,  however,  we  perceive  to 
be,  line  for  line,  as  follows  : — 

“ In  the  year  of  Grace,  Twelve  Hundred 
And  twenty,  the  work,  then  falling  to  ruin, 

Was  first  begun  again. 

Then  was,  of  this  Bishopric 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


070 

*J  i o 

Everard  the  blessed  Bishop. 

And  King  of  France,  Louis, 

Who  was  son  to  Philip  the  Wise. 

He  who  was  Master  of  the  Work 
Was  called  Master  Robert, 

And  called,  beyond  that,  of  Luzarches. 

Master  Thomas  was  after  him, 

Of  Cormont.  And  after  him,  his  son, 

Master  Reginald,  who  to  be  put 
Made — at  this  point— this  reading. 

When  the  Incarnation  was  of  account 

Thirteen  hundred  less  twelve,  which  it  failed  of.” 

In  which  legend,  while  yon  stand  where  once  it  was  written 
(it  was  removed — to  make  the  old  pavement  more  polite — in 
the  year,  I sorrowfully  observe,  of  my  own  earliest  tour  on 
the  Continent,  1825,  when  I had  not  yet  turned  my  attention 
to  Ecclesiastical  Architecture),  these  points  are  noticeable — if 
you  have  still  a little  patience. 

14.  4 The  wrork  ’ — i.e.,  the  Work  of  Amiens  in  especial,  her 
cathedral,  was  ‘decheant,’  falling  to  ruin  for  the — I cannot  at 
once  say — fourth,  fifth,  or  what  time, — in  the  year  1220.  For 
it  was  a wonderfully  difficult  matter  for  little  Amiens  to  get 
this  piece  of  business  fairly  done,  so  hard  did  the  Devil  pull 
against  her.  She  built  her  first  Bishop's  church  (scarcely 
more  than  St.  Firmin’s  tomb-chapel)  about  the  year  850,  just 
outside  the  railway  station  on  the  road  to  Paris ; * then, 
after  being  nearly  herself  destroyed,  chapel  and  all,  by 
the  Frank  invasion,  having  recovered,  and  converted  her 
Franks,  she  built  another  and  a properly  called  cathedral, 
where  this  one  stands  now,  under  Bishop  St.  Save,  (St.  Sauve, 
or  Salve).  But  even  this  proper  cathedral  was  only  of  wood, 
and  the  Normans  burnt  it  in  881.  Rebuilt,  it  stood  for  200 
years  ; but  was  in  great  part  destroyed  by  lightning  in  1019. 
Rebuilt  again,  it  and  the  town  were  more  or  less  burnt  to- 
gether by  lightning,  in  1107, — my  authority  says  calmly  “ un 
incendie  provoque  par  la  meme  cause  detruisit  la  mile  et  une 

* At  St.  Acheul.  See  the  first  chapter  of  this  book,  and  the  “Descrip- 
tion Historique  de  la  CathMrale  d’Amiens,’’  by  A.  P.  M.  Gilbert,  8vo, 
Amiens,  1833,  pp.  5-7. 


374 


4i  OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  USD 


partie  de  la  cathedrale.”  The  ‘ partie  ’ being  rebuilt  once 
more,  the  whole  was  again  reduced  to  ashes,  “reduite  en 
cendre  par  le  feu  de  ciel  en  1218,  ainsi  que  tous  les  titres, 
les  martyrologies,  les  calendriers,  et  les  Archives  de  l’Evecho 
et  du  Chapitre.” 

15.  It  was  the  fifth  cathedral,  I count,  then,  that  lay  in 
‘ashes,’  according  to  Mons.  Gilbert— in  ruin  certainly — dr- 
cheant; — and  ruin  of  a very  discouraging  completeness  it 
would  have  been,  to  less  lively  townspeople — in  1218.  But  it 
was  rather  of  a stimulating  completeness  to  Bishop  Everard 
and  his  people — the  ground  well  cleared  for  them,  as  it 
were  ; and  lightning  (feu  de  l’enfer,  not  du  ciel,  recognized 
for  a diabolic  plague,  as  in  Egypt),  wras  to  be  defied  to  the 
pit.  They  only  took  two  years,  you  see,  to  pull  themselves 
together ; and  to  work  they  went,  in  1220,  they,  and  their 
bishop,  and  their  king,  and  their  Bobert  of  Luzarches.  And 
this,  that  roofs  you,  was  what  their  hands  found  to  do  with 
their  might. 

16.  Their  king  was  ‘a-donc,’  ‘at  that  time,’  Louis  Yffl., 
who  is  especially  further  called  the  son  of  Philip  of  August, 
or  Philip  the  Wise,  because  his  father  was  not  dead  in 
1220 ; but  must  have  resigned  the  practical  kingdom  to  his 
son,  as  his  own  father  had  done  to  him  ; the  old  and  wise  king 
retiring  to  his  chamber,  and  thence  silently  guiding  his  son’s 
hands,  very  gloriously,  yet  for  three  years. 

But,  farther — and  this  is  the  point  on  which  chiefly  I 
would  have  desired  the  Abbe’s  judgment — Louis  VIII.  died 
of  fever  at  Montpensier  in  1226.  And  the  entire  conduct  of 
the  main  labour  of  the  cathedral,  and  the  chief  glory  of  its 
service,  as  we  shall  hear  presently,  was  Saint  Louis’s ; for  a 
time  of  forty-four  years.  And  the  inscription  was  put  “k  ce 
point  ci”  by  the  last  architect,  six  years  after  St.  Louis’s 
death.  How  is  it  that  the  great  and  holy  king  is  not  named  ? 

17.  I must  not,  in  this  traveller’s  brief,  lose  time  in  con- 
jectural answers  to  the  questions  which  every  step  here  will 
raise  from  the  ravaged  shrine.  But  this  is  a very  solemn  one  • 
and  must  be  kept  in  our  hearts,  till  we  may  perhaps  get  clue 
to  it.  One  thing  only  we  are  sure  of, — that  at  least  the  due 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


375 


honour — alike  by  the  sons  of  Kings  and  sons  of  Craftsmen — 
is  given  always  to  their  fathers  ; and  that  apparently  the  chief 
honour  of  all  is  given  here  to  Philip  the  Wise.  From  whose 
house,  not  of  parliament  but  of  peace,  came,  in  the  years  when 
this  temple  was  first  in  building,  an  edict  indeed  of  peace- 
making : “ That  it  should  be  criminal  for  any  man  to  take 
vengeance  for  an  insult  or  injury  till  forty  days  after  the  com- 
mission of  the  offence — and  then  only  with  the  approbation 
of  the  Bishop  of  the  Diocese.”  Which  was  perhaps  a wiser 
effort  to  end  the  Feudal  system  in  its  Saxon  sense,*  than  any 
of  our  recent  projects  for  ending  it  in  the  Norman  one. 

18.  “A  ce  point  ci.”  The  point,  namely,  of  the  labyrinth 
inlaid  in  the  Cathedral  floor ; a recognized  emblem  of  many 
things  to  the  people,  who  knew  that  the  ground  they  stood  on 
was  holy,  as  the  roof  over  their  head.  Chiefly,  to  them,  it  was 
an  emblem  of  noble  human  life,  strait-gated,  narrow-walled, 
with  infinite  darknesses  and  the  “ inextricabilis  error  ” on  either 
hand — and  in  the  depth  of  it,  the  brutal  nature  to  be  con- 
quered. 

19.  This  meaning,  from  the  proudest  heroic,  and  purest 
legislative,  days  of  Greece,  the  symbol  had  borne  for  all  men 
skilled  in  her  traditions  : to  the  schools  of  craftsmen  the  sign 
meant  further  their  craft’s  noblesse,  and  pure  descent  from  the 
divinely-terrestrial  skill  of  Daedalus,  the  labyrinth-builder, 
and  the  first  sculptor  of  imagery  pathetic  f with  human  life 
and  death. 

20.  Quite  the  most  beautiful  sign  of  the  power  of  time 
Christian-Catholic  faith  is  this  continual  acknowledgment  by 

* Feud,  Saxon  faedh,  low  Latin  Faida  (Scottish  ‘ fae,’  English  ‘foe,* 
derivative),  Johnson.  Remember  also  that  the  root  of  Feud,  in  its  Nor- 
man sense  of  land-allotment,  is  foL  not  fee,  which  Johnson,  old  Tory  as 
he  was,  did  not  observe — neither  in  general  does  the  modern  Antifeu- 
dalist. 

t “Tu  quoque,  magnam 

Partem  opere  in  tanto,  sineret  dolor,  Icare,  haberes, 

Bis  conatus  erat  casus  effingere  in  auro, — 

Bis  patrise  cecidere  manus.” 

There  is,  advisedly,  no  pathos  allowed  in  primary  sculpture,  Its  heroes 
conquer  without  exultation,  and  die  without  sorrow. 


376 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  VST 


it  of  the  brotherhood — nay,  more,  the  fatherhood,  of  the  eldei 
nations  who  had  not  seen  Christ ; but  had  been  filled  with  the 
Spirit  of  God  ; and  obeyed,  according  to  their  knowledge, His 
unwritten  law.  The  pure  charity  and  humility  of  this  temper 
are  seen  in  all  Christian  art,  according  to  its  strength  and 
purity  of  race  ; but  best,  to  the  full,  seen  and  interpreted  by 
the  three  great  Christian -Heathen  poets,  Dante,  Douglas  of 
Dunkeld,*  and  George  Chapman.  The  prayer  with  which  the 
last  ends  his  life’s  work  is,  so  far  as  I know,  the  perfectest  and 
deepest  expression  of  Natural  Religion  given  us  in  literature  ; 
and  if  you  can,  pray  it  here — standing  on  the  spot  where  the 
builder  once  wrote  the  history  of  the  Parthenon  of  Christian- 
ity. 

21.  “ I pray  thee,  Lord,  the  father,  and  the  Guide  of  our 
reason,  that  we  may  remember  the  nobleness  with  which  Thou 
hast  adorned  us ; and  that  Thou  would’st  be  always  on  our 
right  hand  and  on  our  left,f  in  the  motion  of  our  own  Wills: 
that  so  wre  may  be  purged  from  the  contagion  of  the  Body 
and  the  Affections  of  the  Brute,  and  overcome  them  and  rule ; 
and  use,  as  it  becomes  men  to  use  them, ’for  instruments.  And 
then,  that  Thou  would’st  be  in  Fellowship  with  us  for  the 
careful  correction  of  our  reason,  and  for  its  conjunction  by 
the  light  of  truth  with  the  things  that  truly  are. 

“ And  in  the  third  place,  I pray  to  Thee  the  Saviour,  that 
Thou  would’st  utterly  cleanse  avTay  the  closing  gloom  from 
the  eyes  of  our  souls,  that  we  may  know  well  who  is  to  be 
held  for  God,  and  who  for  Mortal.  Amen.”  £ 

* See  ‘Fors  Clavigera,’  Letter  LXI.,  vol.  iii.  p.  110. 

f Thus,  the  command  to  the  children  of  Israel  “that  they  go  for- 
ward ” is  to  their  own  wills.  They  obeying,  the  sea  retreats,  but  not  be- 
fore they  dare  to  advance  into  it.  Then , the  waters  are  a wall  unto  them, 
on  their  right  hand  and  their  left. 

\ The  original  is  written  in  Latin  only.  “ Supplico  tibi,  Domine, 
Pater  et  Dux  rationis  nostrae,  ut  nostrae  Nobilitatis  recordemur,  qua  tu 
nos  ornasti : et  ut  tu  nobis  presto  sis,  ut  iis  qui  per  sese  moventur;  ut  et 
a Corporis  contagio,  Brutorumque  affectuum  repurgemur,  eosque  supere- 
nius,  atque  regamus;  et,  sicut  decet,  pro  instrumentis  iis  utamur.  Deinte, 
ut  nobis  adjuncto  sis;  ad  accuratam  rationis  nostrae  correctionem,  et 
eonjunctionem  cum  iis  qui  verc  sunt,  per  lucern  veritatis.  Et  tertium, 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


377 


22.  And  having  prayed  this  prayer,  or  at  least,  read  it  with 
honest  wishing,  (which  if  you  cannot,  there  is  no  hope  of  your 
at  present  taking  pleasure  in  any  human  work  of  large  faculty, 
whether  poetry,  painting,  or  sculpture,)  we  may  walk  a little 
farther  westwards  down  the  nave,  where,  in  the  middle  of  it, 
but  only  a few  yards  from  its  end,  two  flat  stones  (the  custode 
will  show  you  them),  one  a little  farther  back  than  the  other, 
are  laid  over  the  graves  of  the  two  great  bishops,  all  whose 
strength  of  life  was  given,  with  the  builder’s,  to  raise  this 
temple.  Their  actual  graves  have  not  been  disturbed  ; but 
the  tombs  raised  over  them,  once  and  again  removed,  are  now 
set  on  your  right  and  left  hand  as  you  look  back  to  the  apse, 
under  the  third  arch  between  the  nave  and  aisles. 

23.  Both  are  of  bronze,  cast  at  one  flow — and  with  insu- 
perable, in  some  respects  inimitable,  skill  in  the  caster’s  art. 

“ Chef-d’ceuvres  de  fonte, — le  tout  fondu  d’un  seul  jet,  et 
admirablement.”  * There  are  only  two  other  such  tombs  left 
in  France,  those  of  the  children  of  St.  Louis.  All  others  of 
their  kind — and  they  were  many  in  every  great  cathedral  of 
France — were  first  torn  from  the  graves  they  covered,  to  de- 
stroy the  memory  of  France’s  dead  ; and  then  melted  down 
into  sous  and  centimes,  to  buy  gunpowder  and  absinthe  with 
for  her  living, — by  the  Progressive  Mind  of  Civilization  in 
her  first  blaze  of  enthusiasm  and  new  light,  from  1789  to 
1800. 

The  children’s  tombs,  one  on  each  side  of  the  altar  of  St. 
Denis,  are  much  smaller  than  these,  though  wrought  more 
beautifully.  These  beside  you  are  the  only  two  Bronze  tombs 
of  her  Men  of  the  great  ages , left  in  France  ! 

Salvatori  supplex  oro,  ut  ab  oculis  animorum  nostrorum  caliginem 
prorsus  abstergas ; ut  norimus  bene,  qui  Deus,  aut  Mortalis  habendus. 
Amen.’’ 

* Viollet  le  Due,  vol.  viii  , p.  256.  He  adds:  “ L’une  d’elles  est 
eomme  art  ” (meaning  general  art  of  sculpture),  “un  monument  du 
premier  ordre  ; ” but  this  is  only  partially  true — also  I find  a note  in  M. 
Gilbert’s  account  of  them,  p.  126:  “Lesdeux  doigts  qui  manquent,  a 
la  main  droite  de  l’4veque  Gaudefroi  paraissent  etre  un  defaut  survenu 
a la  fonte.”  See  further,  on  these  monuments,  and  those  of  St.  Louis’ 
children,  Viollet  le  Due,  vol.  ix. , pp.  61,  62. 


378 


“067?  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US. 


24.  And  they  are  the  tombs  of  the  pastors  of  her  people, 
who  built  for  her  the  first  perfect  temple  to  her  God.  The 
Bishop  Everard’s  is  on  your  right,  and  has  engraved  round 
the  border  of  it  this  inscription  : *■ — 

“ Who  fed  the  people,  who  laid  the  foundations  of  this 
Structure,  to  whose  care  the  City  was  given, 

Here,  in  ever-breathing  balm  of  fame,  rests  Everard. 

A man  compassionate  to  the  afflicted,  the  widow’s  protector,  the  or- 
phan's 

Guardian.  Whom  he  could,  he  recreated  with  gifts. 

To  words  of  men, 

If  gentle,  a lamb  ; if  violent,  a lion  ; if  proud,  biting  steel.” 

* I steal  again  from  the  Abbe  Roze  the  two  inscriptions, — with  his 
introductory  notice  of  the  evilly-inspired  interference  with  them. 

“La  tombe  d’Evrard  de  Fouilloy,  (died  1222),  coulee  en  bronze  en 
plein-relief,  etait  supportee  des  le  principe,  par  des  monstres  engages 
dans  une  mac^onnerie  remplissant  le  dessous  du  monument,  pour  indi- 
quer  que  cet  eveque  avait  pose  les  fondements  de  la  Catliedrale.  Un 
architecte  malheureusement  inspire  a os 6 arracher  la  mayonnerie,  pour 
qu’on  ne  vit  plus  la  main  du  prelat  fondateur,  a la  base  de  1 edifice. 

“ On  lit,  sur  la  bordure,  l’inscription  suivante  en  beaux  caracteresdu 
XIII*  siccle  : 

“ 4 Qui  populum  pavit,  qui  fundameta  locavit 
Huius  structure,  cuius  fuit  urbs  data  euro 
Hie  rcdolens  nardus,  1'amii  requiescit  E ward  us, 

Vir  pius  ahfiictis,  vidvis  tuteia,  relictis 
Custos,  quos  poterat  recreabat  munere  ; vbis, 

Mitib  agnus  erat,  tumidis  leo,  lima  supbis.’ 

“Geofiroy  d’Eu  (died  1237)  est  represente  comme  son  predecesseur 
en  habits  episcopaux,  mais  le  dessous  du  bronze  supporte  par  des 
eliimeres  est  evide,  ce  prelat  ayant  eleve  l’edifice  jusqu'aux  vofites. 
Voici  la  legende  gravee  sur  la  bordure  : 

“ ‘Ecce  premunt  huniile  Gaufridi  membra  cubile. 

Seu  minus  aut  simile  nobis  parat  omnibus  ille ; 

Quern  laurus  gemina  decoi  averat,  in  medicina 
Lege  qu  divina,  decueruet  cornua  bina  , 

Clare  vir  Augensis,  quo  sedes  Ambianensis 
Crevit  in  imensis  ; in  cceliR  auctus,  Amen,  sis.’ 

Tout  est  a etudier  dans  ces  deux  monuments  ; tout  y est  d’un  haut  in- 
teret,  quant  au  dessin,  a la  sculpture,  a l’agencement  des  ornements  et 
des  draperies.” 

In  saying  above  that  Geoff roy  of  Eu  returned  thanks  in  the  Cathedral 
for  its  completion,  I meant  only  that  he  had  brought  at  least  the  choir 
into  condition  for  service  : “ Jusqu’aux  vofites  ” may  or  may  not  mean 
that  the  vaulting  was  closed. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


379 


English,  at  its  best,  in  Elizabethan  days,  is  a nobler  lan- 
guage then  ever  Latin  was  ; but  its  virtue  is  in  colour  and 
tone,  not  in  what  may  be  called  metallic  or  crystalline  con- 
densation. And  it  is  impossible  to  translate  the  last  line  of 
this  inscription  in  as  few  English  words.  Note  in  it  first 
that  the  Bishop’s  friends  and  enemies  are  spoken  of  as  in 
word,  not  act ; because  the  swelling,  or  mocking,  or  flatter- 
ing, words  of  men  are  indeed  what  the  meek  of  the  earth 
must  know  how  to  bear  and  to  welcome  ; — their  deeds,  it  is 
for  kings  and  knights  to  deal  with  : not  but  that  the  Bishops 
often  took  deeds  in  hand  also  ; and  in  actual  battle  they  were 
permitted  to  strike  with  the  mace,  but  not  with  sword  or 
lance — i.e.,  not  to  “ shed  blood”  ! For  it  was  supposed  that 
a man  might  always  recover  from  a mace-blow  ; (which,  how- 
ever, would  much  depend  on  the  bishop’s  mind  who  gave  it). 
The  battle  of  Bouvines,  quite  one  of  the  most  important  in 
mediaeval  history,  was  won  against  the  English,  and  against 
odds  besides  of  Germans,  under  their  Emperor  Otho,  by  two 
French  bishops  (Senlis  and  Bayeux) — who  both  generalled 
the  French  King’s  line,  and  led  its  charges.  Our  Earl  of  Salis- 
bury surrendered  to  the  Bishop  of  Bayeux  in  person. 

25.  Note  farther,  that  quite  one  of  the  deadliest  and  most 
diabolic  powers  of  evil  words,  or,  rightly  so  called,  blasphemy, 
has  been  developed  in  modern  days  in  the  effect  of  some- 
times quite  innocently  meant  and  enjoyed  ‘slang.’  There  are 
two  kinds  of  slang,  in  the  essence  of  it : one  ‘ Thieves’  Latin  * 
—the  special  language  of  rascals,  used  for  concealment ; the 
other,  one  might  perhaps  best  call  Louts’  Latin  ! — the  lower- 
ing or  insulting  words  invented  by  vile  persons  to  bring  good 
things,  in  their  own  estimates,  to  their  own  level,  or  beneath 
it.  The  really  worst  power  of  this  kind  of  blasphemy  is  in  its 
often  making  it  impossible  to  use  plain  words  without  a de- 
grading or  ludicrous  attached  sense  : — thus  I could  not  end 
my  translation  of  this  epitaph,  as  the  old  Latinist  could,  with 
the  exactly  accurate  image  : “to  the  proud,  a file  ” — because 
of  the  abuse  of  the  word  in  lower  English,  retaining, 
however,  quite  shrewdly,  the  thirteenth-century  idea.  But 
the  exact  force  of  the  symbol  here  is  in  its  allusion  to 


380 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US” 


jewellers’  work,  filing  down  facets.  A proud  man  is  often 
also  a precious  one  : and  may  be  made  brighter  in  surface, 
and  the  purity  of  his  inner  self  shown,  by  good  filing. 

26.  Take  it  all  in  all,  the  perfect  duty  of  a Bishop  is  ex- 
pressed in  these  six  Latin  lines,— au  mieuxmieux — beginning 
with  his  pastoral  office— Feed  my  sheep— qui  pavit  populum. 
And  be  assured,  good  reader,  these  ages  never  could  have  told 
you  what  a Bishop’s,  or  any  other  man’s,  duty  was,  unless 
they  had  each  man  in  his  place  both  done  it  well- — and  seen  it 
well  done.  The  Bishop  Geoflroy’s  tomb  is  on  your  left,  and 
its  inscription  is  : 

1 1 Behold,  the  limbs  of  Godfrey  press  their  lowly  bed, 

Whether  He  is  preparing  for  us  all  one  less  than,  or  like  it. 

Whom  the  twin  laurels  adorned,  in  medicine 
And  in  divine  law,  the  dual  crests  became  him. 

Bright-shining  man  of  Eu,  by  whom  the  throne  of  Amiens 
Rose  into  immensity,  be  thou  increased  in  Heaven.’’ 

Amen. 

And  now  at  last — this  reverence  done  and  thanks  paid — we 
will  turn  from  these  tombs,  and  go  out  at  one  of  the  western 
doors — and  so  see  gradually  rising  above  us  the  immensity  of 
the  three  porches,  and  of  the  thoughts  engraved  in  them. 

27.  What  disgrace  or  change  has  come  upon  them,  I will 
not  tell  you  to-day — except  only  the  ‘ immeasurable  ’ loss  of 
the  great  old  foundation-steps,  open,  sweeping  broad  from  side 
to  side  for  all  who  came  ; unwalled,  undivided,  sunned  all 
along  by  the  westering  day,  lighted  only  by  the  moon  and 
the  stars  at  night  ; falling  steep  and  many  down  the  hillside 
— ceasing  one  by  one,  at  last  wide  and  few  towards  the  level 
— and  worn  by  pilgrim  feet,  for  six  hundred  years.  So  I once 
saw  them,  and  twice, — such  things  can  now  be  never  seen  - 
more. 

Nor  even  of  the  west  front  itself,  above,  is  much  of  the  old 
masonry  left : but  in  the  porches,  nearly  all, — except  the  actual 
outside  facing,  with  its  rose  moulding,  of  which  only  a few 
flowers  have  been  spared  here  and  there.*  But  the  sculpture 

* The  horizontal  lowest  part  of  the  moulding  between  the  northern 
and  central  porch  is  old  Compare  its  roses  with  the  new  oues  running 
round  the  arches  above  and  you  will  know  what  ‘ Restoration  means. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS . 


381 


lias  been  carefully  and  honourably  kept  and  restored  to  its 
place — pedestals  or  niches  restored  here  and  there  with  clay  ; 
or  some  which  you  see  white  and  crude,  re-carved  entirely ; 
nevertheless  the  impression  you  may  receive  from  the  whole  is 
still  what  the  builder  meant ; and  I will  tell  you  the  order  of 
its  theology  without  further  notices  of  its  decay. 

28.  You  will  find  it  always  well,  in  looking  at  any  cathedral, 
to  make  your  quarters  of  the  compass  sure,  in  the  beginning  ; 
and  to  remember  that,  as  you  enter  it,  you  are  looking  and 
advancing  eastward  ; and  that  if  it  has  three  entrance  porches, 
that  on  your  left  in  entering  is  the  northern,  that  on  your 
right  the  southern.  I shall  endeavour  in  all  my  future  writ- 
ing of  architecture,  to  observe  the  simple  law  of  always  calling 
the  door  of  the  north  transept  the  north  door  ; and  that  on 
the  same  side  of  the  west  front,  the  northern  door,  and  so  of 
their  opposites.  This  will  save,  in  the  end,  much  printing 
and  much  confusion,  for  a Gothic  cathedral  has,  almost  always, 
these  five  great  entrances  ; which  may  be  easily,  if  at  first  at- 
tentively, recognized  under  the  titles  of  the  Central  door  (or 
porch),  the  Northern  door,  the  Southern  door,  North  door, 
and  the  South  door. 

But  when  we  use  the  terms  right  and  left,  we  ought  always 
to  use  them  as  in  going  vut  of  the  cathedral,  or  walking  down 
the  nave, — the  entire  north  side  and  aisles  of  the  building  being 
its  right  side,  and  the  south,  its  left, — these  terms  being  only 
used  well  and  authoritatively,  when  they  have  reference  either 
to  the  image  of  Christ  in  the  apse  or  on  the  rood,  or  else  to  the 
central  statue,  whether  of  Christ,  the  Virgin,  or  a saint,  in  the 
west  front.  At  Amiens,  this  central  statue,  on  the  ‘ trumeau 5 or 
supporting  and  dividing  pillar  of  the  central  porch,  is  of  Christ 
Immanuel, — God  with  us.  On  His  right  hand  and  His  left, 
occupying  the  entire  walls  of  the  central  porch,  are  the  apostles 
and  the  four  greater  prophets.  The  twelve  minor  prophets 
stand  side  by  side  on  the  front,  three  on  each  of  its  great  piers.* 

The  northern  porch  is  dedicated  to  St.  Firmin,  the  first 
Christian  missionary  to  Amiens. 

The  southern  porch,  to  the  Virgin. 

* See  now  the  plan  at  the  end  of  this  chapter 


382 


11  OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US." 


Bito  these  are  both  treated  as  withdrawn  behind  the  great 
foundation  of  Christ  and  the  Prophets  ; and  their  narrow  re- 
cesses partly  conceal  their  sculpture,  until  you  enter  them. 
What  you  have  first  to  think  of,  and  read,  is  the  scripture  of 
the  great  central  porch,  and  the  fayade  itself. 

29.  You  have  then  in  the  centre  of  the  front,  the  image  of 
Christ  Himself,  receiving  you  : “lam  the  Way,  the  truth  and 
the  life.  ” And  the  order  of  the  attendant  powers  may  be  best 
understood  by  thinking  of  them  as  placed  on  Christ’s  right 
and  left  hand : this  being  also  the  order  which  the  builder 
adopts  in  his  Scripture  history  on  the  fa£ade — so  that  it  is  to 
be  read  from  left  to  right — i.e.  from  Christ’s  left  to  Christ’s 
right,  as  He  sees  it.  Thus,  therefore,  following  the  order  of 
the  great  statues : first  in  the  central  porch,  there  are  six 
apostles  on  Christ’s  right  hand,  and  six  on  His  left.  On  His 
left  hand,  next  Him,  Peter  ; then  in  receding  order,  Andrew, 
James,  John,  Matthew,  Simon  ; on  His  right  hand,  next  Him, 
Paul;  and  in  receding  order,  James  the  Bishop,  Philip,  Bar- 
tholomew, Thomas,  and  Jude.  These  opposite  ranks  of  the 
Apostles  occupy  what  may  be  called  the  apse  or  curved  bay 
of  the  porch,  and  form  a nearly  semicircular  group,  clearly 
visible  as  we  approach.  But  on  the  sides  of  the  porch,  out- 
side the  lines  of  apostles,  and  not  .seen  clearly  till  we  enter 
the  porch,  are  the  four  greater  prophets.  On  Christ’s  left, 
Isaiah  and  Jeremiah,  on  His  right,  Ezekiel  and  Daniel. 

80.  Then  in  front,  along  the  whole  fagade — read  in  order 
from  Christ’s  left  to  His  right — come  the  series  of  the  twelve 
minor  prophets,  three  to  each  of  the  four  piers  of  the  temple, 
beginning  at  the  south  angle  with  Hosea,  and  ending  with 
Malachi. 

As  you  look  full  at  the  fayade  in  front,  the  statues  which 
fill  the  minor  porches  are  either  obscured  in  their  narrower 
recesses  or  withdrawn  behind  each  other  so  as  to  be  unseen. 
And  the  entire  mass  of  the  front  is  seen,  literally,  as  built  on 
the  foundation  of  the  Apostles  and  Prophets,  Jesus  Christ 
Himself  being  the  chief  corner-stone.  Literally  that ; for  the 
receding  Porch  is  a deep  4 angulus,’  and  its  mid-pillar  is  the 
‘Head  of  the  Corner.’  . 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS . 


383 


Built  on  the  foundation  of  the  Apostles  and  Prophets,  that 
is  to  say  of  the  Prophets  who  foretold  Christ,  and  the  Apostles 
who  declared  Him.  Though  Moses  was  an  Apostle,  of  God, 
he  is  not  here — though  Elijah  was  a Prophet,  of  God,  he  is 
not  here.  The  voice  of  the  entire  building  is  that  of  the 
Heaven  at  the  Transfiguration,  44  This  is  my  beloved  Son,  hear 
ye  Him.” 

31.  There  is  yet  another  and  a greater  prophet  still,  who, 
as  it  seems  at  first,  is  not  here.  Shall  the  people  enter  the 
gates  of  the  temple,  singing  44  Hosanna  to  the  Son  of  David  ” ; 
and  see  no  image  of  His  father,  then  ? — Christ  Himself  de- 
clare “I  am  the  root  and  the  offspring  of  David  ” ; and  yet 
the  Root  have  no  sign  near  it  of  its  Earth  ? 

Not  so.  David  and  his  son  are  together.  David  is  the 
pedestal  of  the  Christ. 

32.  We  will  begin  our  examination  of  the  Temple  front, 
therefore,  with  this  its  goodly  pedestal  stone.  The  statue  of 
David  is  only  two-thirds  life-size,  occupying  the  niche  in  front 
of  the  pedestal  He  holds  his  sceptre  in  his  right  hand,  the 
scroll  in  his  left.  King  and  Prophet,  type  of  all  Divinely 
right  doing,  and  right  claiming,  and  right  proclaiming,  king- 
hood,  for  ever. 

The  pedestal  of  which  this  statue  forms  the  fronting  or 
western  sculpture,  is  square,  and  on  the  two  sides  of  it  are  twro 
dowers  in  vases,  on  its  north  side  the  lily,  and  on  its  south  the 
rose.  And  the  entire  monolith  is  one  of  the  noblest  pieces  of 
Christian  sculpture  in  the  world. 

Above  this  pedestal  comes  a minor  one,  bearing  in  front  of 
it  a tendril  of  vine  which  completes  the  floral  symbolism  of 
the  whole.  The  plant  which  I have  called  a lily  is  not  the 
Eleur  de  Lys,  nor  the  Madonna’s,  but  an  ideal  one  with  bells 
like  the  crown  Imperial  (Shakespeare’s  type  of  4 lilies  of  all 
kinds  ’),  representing  the  mode  of  growth  of  the  lily  of  the 
valley,  which  could  not  be  sculptured  so  large  in  its  literal 
form  without  appearing  monstrous,  and  is  exactly  expressed 
in  this  tablet — as  it  fulfils,  together  with  the  rose  and  vine, 
its  companions,  the  triple  saying  of  Christ,  44 1 am  the  Rose  of 
Sharon,  and  the  Lily  of  the  Valley.”  44 1 am  the  true  Vine.” 


3S4 


“ OITR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US. 


33.  On  the  side  of  the  upper  stone  are  supporters  of  a dif- 
ferent character.  Supporters,  not  captives  nor  victims  ; the 
Cockatrice  and  Adder.  ^Representing  the  most  active  evil 
principles  of  the  earth,  as  in  their  utmost  malignity  ; still, 
Pedestals  of  Christ,  and  even  in  their  deadly  life,  accomplish- 
ing His  final  will. 

Both  creatures  are  represented  accurately  in  the  mediaeval 
traditional  form,  the  cockatrice  half  dragon,  half  cock  ; the 
deaf  adder  laying  one  ear  against  the  ground  and  stopping 
the  other  with  her  tail. 

The  first  represents  the  infidelity  of  Pride.  The  cockatrice 
— king  serpent  or  highest  serpent — saying  that  he  is  God, 
and  ivill  be  God. 

The  second,  the  infidelity  of  Death.  The  adder  (nieder  or 
nether  snake)  saying  that  he  is  mud,  and  will  be  mud. 

34.  Lastly,  and  above  all,  set  under  the  feet  of  the  statue 
of  Christ  Himself,  are  the  lion  and  dragon  ; the  images  of 
Carnal  sin,  or  Human  sin,  as  distinguished  from  the  Spiritual 
and  Intellectual  sin  of  Pride,  by  which  the  angels  also  fell. 

To  desire  kingship  rather  than  servantship — the  Cocka- 
trice’s sin,  or  deaf  Death  rather  than  hearkening  Life — the 
Adder’s  sin, — these  are  both  possible  to  all  the  intelligences 
of  the  universe.  But  the  distinctively  Human  sins,  anger  and 
lust,  seeds  in  our  race  of  their  perpetual  sorrow — Christ  in 
His  own  humanity,  conquered  ; and  conquers  in  His  disciples. 
Therefore  his  foot  is  on  the  heads  of  these  ; and  the  prophecy, 
“ Xneulcabis  super  Leonem  et  Aspidem,”  is  recognized  always 
as  fulfilled  in  Him,  and  in  all  His  true  servants,  according  to 
the  height  of  their  authority,  and  the  truth  of  their  power. 

35.  In  this  mystic  sense,  Alexander  HI.  used  the  words,  in 
restoring  peace  to  Italy,  and  giving  forgiveness  to  her  deadli- 
est enemy,  under  the  porch  of  St.  Mark’s.*  But  the  meaning 
of  every  act,  as  of  every  art,  of  the  Christian  ages,  lost  now 
for  three  hundred  years,  cannot  but  be  in  our  own  times  read 
reversed,  if  at  all,  through  the  counter-spirit  which  we  now 

* See  my  abstract  of  the  history  of  Barbarossa  and  Alexander,  in 
‘Fiction,  Fair  and  Foul,’  ‘ Nineteenth  Century November,  1880,  pp. 
*?53  seq. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS . 


885 


nave  reached  ; glorifying  Pride  and  Avarice  as  the  virtues  by 
which  all  things  move  and  have  their  being — walking  after 
our  own  lusts  as  our  sole  guides  to  salvation,  and  foaming  out 
our  own  shame  for  the  sole  earthly  product  of  our  hands  and 
lips. 

36.  Of  the  statue  of  Christ,  itself,  I will  not  speak  here  at 
any  length,  as  no  sculpture  would  satisfy,  or  ought  to  satisfy, 
the  hope  of  any  loving  soul  that  has  learned  to  trust  in  Him  ; 
but  at  the  time,  it  was  beyond  what  till  then  had  been 
reached  in  sculptured  tenderness  ; and  was  known  far  and 
near  as  the  “Beau  Dieu  d’ Amiens. ” * Yet  understood,  ob- 
serve, just  as  clearly  to  be  no  more  than  a symbol  of  the 
Heavenly  Presence,  as  the  poor  coiling  worms  below  were  no 
more  than  symbols  of  the  demoniac  ones.  No  idol,  in  our 
sense  of  the  word — only  a letter,  or  sign  of  the  Living  Spirit, 
- — which,  however,  was  indeed  conceived  by  every  worshipper 
as  here  meeting  him  at  the  temple  gate  : the  Word  of  Life, 
the  King  of  Glory,  and  the  Lord  of  Hosts. 

“ Dominus  Virtutum,”  “Lord  of  Virtues,”  f is  the  best  sin- 
gle rendering  of  the  idea  conveyed  to  a well-taught  disciple  in 
the  thirteenth  century  by  the  words  of  the  twenty-fourth 
Psalm. 

37.  Under  the  feet  of  His  apostles,  therefore,  in  the  quatre- 
foil  medallions  of  the  foundation,  are  represented  the  virtues 
which  each  Apostle  taught,  or  in  his  life  manifested  ; — it  may 
have  been,  sore  tried,  and  failing  in  the  very  strength  of  the 
character  whieh  he  afterwards  perfected.  Thus  St.  Peter 
denying  in  fear,  is  afterwards  the  Apostle  of  courage  ; and 
St.  John,  who,  with  his  brother,  -would  have  burnt  the  inhospi- 

* See  account,  and  careful  drawing  of  it,  in  Viollet  le  Due — article 
“Christ,”  Diet,  of  Architecture,  iii.  245. 

f See  the  circle  of  the  Powers  of  the  Heavens  in  the  Byzantine 
rendering.  I.  Wisdom  ; II.  Thrones  ; III.  Dominations  ; IY.  Angels  ; 
Y.  Archangels  ; YI.  Virtues  ; VII.  Potentates  ; VIII.  Princes  ; IX.  Sera- 
phim. In  the  Gregorian  order,  (Dante,  Par.  xxviii.,  Cary’s  note,)  the 
Angels  and  Archangels  are  separated,  giving  altogether  nine  orders,  but 
not  ranks.  Note  that  in  the  Byzantine  circle  the  cherubim  are  first,  and 
that  it  is  the  strength  of  the  Virtues  which  calls  on  the  dead  to  rise 
(‘St.  Mark’s  Rest,’  p.  80,  and  pp.  132-133), 


386 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HA  VE  TOLU  USE 


table  village,  is  afterwards  the  Apostle  of  love.  Understanding 
this,  you  see  that  in  the  sides  of  the  porch,  the  apostles  with 
their  special  virtues  stand  thus  in  opposite  ranks. 


St.  Paul,  Faith.  Courage,  St.  Peter. 

St.  James  the  Bishop,  Hope.  Patience,  St.  Andrew,  i 

I 

St.  Philip,  Charity.  Gentillesse,  St.  James. 

St.  Bartholomew,  Chastity.  Love,  St.  John. 

St.  Thomas,  Wisdom.  Obedience,  St.  Matthew. 

St.  Jude,  Humility.  Perseverance,  St.  Simon. 


Now  you  see  how  these  virtues  answer  to  each  other  in 
their  opposite  ranks.  Remember  the  left-hand  side  is  always 
the  first,  and  see  how  the  left-hand  virtues  lead  to  the  right 
hand  - 


Courage 

Patience 

Gentillesse 

Love 

Obedience 

Perseverance 


to  Faith, 
to  Hope, 
to  Charity, 
to  Chastity, 
to  Wisdom, 
to  Humility. 


38.  Note  farther  that  the  Apostles  are  all  tranquil,  nearly 
all  with  books,  some  with  crosses,  but  all  with  the  same  mes- 
sage,— “ Peace  be  to  this  house.  And  if  the  Son  of  Peace  be 
there,”  etc.* 

But  the  Prophets — all  seeking,  or  wistful,  or  tormented,  or 
wondering,  or  praying,  except  only  Daniel.  The  most  tor- 
mented is  Isaiah  ; spiritually  sawn  asunder.  No  scene  of  his 
martyrdom  below,  but  his  seeing  the  Lord  in  His  temple,  and 
yet  feeling  he  had  unclean  lips.  Jeremiah  also  carries  his 
cross— but  more  serenely. 

*The  modern  slang  name  for  a priest,  among  the  mob  of  France,  is 
& ‘Pax  Yobiscum,’  or  shortly,  a Vobiscum. 


* 

THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


387 

39.  And  now,  I give  in  clear  succession,  the  order  of  the 
statues  of  the  whole  front,  with  the  subjects  of  the  quatrefoils 
beneath  each  of  them,  marking  the  upper  quatrefoil  a,  the  lower 
b.  The  six  prophets  who  stand  at  the  angles  of  the  porches, 
Amos,  Obadiah,  Micah,  Nahum,  Zephaniah,  and  Haggai,  have 
each  of  them  four  quatrefoils,  marked  a and  c the  upper  ones, 
b and  d the  lower. 

Beginning,  then,  on  the  left-hand  side  of  the  central  porch, 
and  reading  outwards,  you  have — 

f • St.  Peter. 

a.  Courage. 

b.  Cowardice. 

St.  Andrew. 

a.  Patience. 

b.  Anger. 

3.  St.  James. 

a.  Gentillesse. 

b.  Churlishness. 

4*.  St.  John. 

a.  Love. 

b.  Discord. 

§i  St.  Matthew. 

a.  Obedience. 

b.  Rebellion. 

©a  St.  Simon. 

a.  Perseverance. 

b.  xitheism. 

Now,  right-hand  side  of  porch,  reading  outwards : 

7.  St.  Paul. 

a.  Faith. 

b.  Idolatry. 

8>  St.  James,  Bishop. 

a.  Hope. 

b.  Despair. 

9.  St.  Philip. 

a.  Charity. 

3.  Avarice. 


388 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US.” 


I O.  St.  Bartholomew. 

a.  Chastity. 

b.  Lust. 

SI.  St.  Thomas. 

a.  Wisdom. 

b.  Folly. 

1 2.  St.  Jude. 

a.  Humility. 

b.  Pride. 

Now,  left-hand  side  again — the  two  outermost  statues : 
S3.  Isaiah. 

a.  “I  saw  the  Lord  sitting  upon  a 


throne.”  vi.  L 

b.  “Lo,  this  hath  touched  thy  lips.”  ^ vi.  7, 

I 4.  Jeremiah. 

a.  The  Burial  of  the  Girdle.  xiii.  4,  5. 

b.  The  Breaking  of  the  Yoke.  xxviii.  10. 

Bight-hand  side : 
i 5.  Ezekiel. 

a.  Wheel  within  Wheel.  i.  16. 

b.  “Son  of  man,  set  thy  face  toward 

Jerusalem.”  xxi.  2. 

S 6.  Daniel. 

a.  “ He  hath  shut  the  lions’  mouths.”  vi.  22. 

b.  “ In  the  same  hour  came  forth  fin- 

gers of  a man’s  hand.”  v.  *5. 


40.  Now,  beginning  on  the  left-hand  side  (southern  side} 
of  the  entire  fagade,  and  reading  it  straight  across,  not  turn- 
ing into  the  porches  at  all  except  for  the  paired  quatrefoils : 

I 7 • Hosea. 


A. 

“ So  I bought  her  to  me  with 

fifteen  pieces  of  silver.” 

iii.  2. 

B. 

“ So  will  I also  be  for  thee.” 

iii.  3. 

A. 

The  Sun  and  Moon  lightless. 

ii.  10. 

B. 

The  Fig-tree  and  Vine  leafless. 

i.  7. 

THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


389 


S 9.  Amos. 

To  the 
front 

Inside  ( 
porch  i 


a.  “ The  Lord  will  cry  from  Zion.” 

b.  “The  habitations  of  the  shep- 

herds shall  mourn.” 

c.  The  Lord  with  the  mason’s  line. 

d.  The  place  where  it  rained  not. 


20.  Obadiah. 

Inside  j a.  “I  hid  them  in  a cave.”  2 Kings 
porch  ( b.  He  fell  on  his  face. 

To  the  f c.  The  captain  of  fifty, 
front  \ d.  The  messenger. 

2 1 . Jonah. 

a.  Escaped  from  the  sea. 

b.  Under  the  gourd. 

22.  Micah. 

To  the  (-JW_The  Tower  of  the  Flock, 
front  1 B*  -^ac^  restj  and  “none  shall 
v.  make  them  afraid.” 

Inside  j c.  Swords  into  ploughshares, 
porch  ( d.  Spears  into  pruning-hooks. 

28.  Nahum. 

Inside  ( a.  None  shall  look  back, 
porch  ( b.  The  burden  of  Nineveh. 

To  the  j c.  Thy  princes  and  thy  great  ones, 
front  ( d.  Untimely  figs. 

24.  Habakkuk. 

a.  “I  will  watch  to  see  what 

he  will  say.” 

b.  The  ministry  to  Daniel. 

25.  Zephaniah. 

To  the  j a.  The  Lord  strikes  Ethiopia, 
front  ( b.  The  Beasts  in  Nineveh. 

Inside  j c.  The  Lord  visits  Jerusalem, 
porch  ( r>.  The  Hedgehog  and  Bittern.* 


i.  2. 

i.  2. 
vii.  8. 
iv.  7. 

xviii.  13. 
xviii.  7. 


iv.  8. 

iv.  4 
iv.  3. 
iv.  3. 


ii.  8. 
i.  1. 
iii.  17. 

iii.  12. 


ii.  1. 


ii.  12. 
ii.  15. 

i.  12. 

ii.  14. 


* See  tlie  Septuagint  version. 


390 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US” 


26*  Hag gai. 


Inside 

porch 

To  the 
front 


( a.  The  houses  of  the  princes, 

-j  ornees  de  lambris. 

( b.  The  heaven  is  stayed  from  dew. 

( c.  The  Lord’s  temple  desolate. 

( d.  “ Thus  saith  the  Lord  of  Hosts.” 


i.  4 
i.  10. 
i.  4. 
i.  7. 


#27  B Zechariah. 

a.  The  lifting  up  of  iniquity.  v.  6 — 9. 

b.  The  angel  that  spake  to  me.  iv.  1. 

2#  9 Malachi. 

a.  “ Ye  have  wounded  the  Lord.”  ii.  17. 

b.  This  commandment  is  to  you . ii.  1. 

41.  Having  thus  put  the  sequence  of  the  statues  and  their 
quatrefoils  briefly  before  the  spectator — (in  case  the  railway 
time  presses,  it  may  be  a kindness  to  him  to  note  that  if  he 
walks  from  the  east  end  of  the  cathedral  down  the  street  to 
the  south,  Rue  St.  Denis,  it  takes  him  by  the  shortest  line  to 
the  station) — I will  begin  again  with  St.  Peter,  and  interpret 
the  sculptures  in  the  quatrefoils  a little  more  fully.  Keep- 
ing the  fixed  numerals  for  indication  of  the  statues,  St.  Peter’s 
quartrefoils  will  be  1 a and  1 b,  and  Malachi’s  28  a.  and  28  b. 
fi  9 a.  Courage,  with  a leopard  on  his  shield  ; the  French  and 
English  agreeing  in  the  reading  of  that  symbol,  down 
to  the  time  of  the  Black  Prince’s  leopard  coinage  in 
Aquitaine.* 

t 9 b.  Cowardice,  a man  frightened  at  an  animal  darting  out 
of  a thicket,  while  a bird  sings  on.  The  coward  has 
not  the  heart  of  a thrush. 

2;  a.  Patience,  holding  a shield  with  a bull  on  it  (never  giv- 
ing back).f 

* For  a list  of  the  photographs  of  the  quatrefoils  described  in  this 
chapter,  see  the  appendices  at  the  end  of  this  volume. 

f In  the  cathedral  of  Laon  there  is  a pretty  compliment  paid  to  the 
oxen  who  carried  the  stones  of  its  tower  to  the  hill-top  it  stands  on. 
The  tradition  is  that  they  harnessed  themselves, — but  tradition  does  not 
gay  how  an  ox  can  harness  himself  even  if  he  had  a mind.  Probably 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. . 


391 


2,  b.  Anger,  a woman  stabbing  a man  with  a sword.  Anger 
is  essentially  a feminine  vice — a man,  worth  calling  so, 
may  be  driven  to  fury  or  insanity  by  indignation , 
(compare  the  Black  Prince  at  Limoges),  but  not  by 
anger.  Fiendish  enough  often  so— “ Incensed  with 
indignation,  Satan  stood,  unterrified — ” but  in  that 
last  word  is  the  difference,  there  is  as  much  fear  in 
Anger,  as  there  is  in  Hatred. 

a.  Gentillesse,  bearing  shield  with  a lamb. 

3f  b.  Churlishness,  again  a woman,  kicking  over  her  cup- 
bearer. The  final  forms  of  ultimate  French  churlish- 
ness being  in  the  feminine  gestures  of  the  Cancan. 
See  the  favourite  prints  in  shops  of  Paris. 

4,  a.  Love  ; the  Divine,  not  human  love  : “ I in  them,  and 
Thou  in  me.”  Her  shield  bears  a tree  with  many 
branches  grafted  into  its  cut-off  stem  : “In  those 
days  shall  Messiah  be  cut  off,  but  not  for  Himself.” 
4,  b.  Discord,  a wife  and  husband  quarrelling.  She  has 
dropped  her  distaff  (Amiens  wool  manufacture,  see 
farther  on — 9,  a.) 

5 9 a.  Obedience,  bears  shield  with  camel.  Actually  the 
most  disobedient  and  ill-tempered  of  all  serviceable 
beasts, — yet  passing  his  life  in  the  most  painful  ser- 
vice. I do  not  know  how  far  his  character  was  under- 
stood by  the  northern  sculptor ; but  I believe  he  is 
taken  as  a type  of  burden-bearing,  without  joy  or 
sympathy,  such  as  the  horse  has,  and  without  power 
of  offence,  such  as  the  ox  has.  His  bite  is  bad  enough, 
(see  Mr.  Palgrave’s  account  of  him,)  but  presumably 
little  known  of  at  Amiens,  even  by  Crusaders,  who 
would  always  ride  their  own  war-horses,  or  nothing. 

b.  Rebellion,  a man  snapping  his  fingers  at  his  Bishop. 

(As  Henry  the  Eighth  at  the  Pope, — and  the  modern 
French  and  English  cockney  at  all  priests  whatever.) 

the  first  form  of  the  story  was  only  that  they  went  joyfully,  “ lowing  as 
they  went.”  But  at  all  events  their  statues  are  carved  on  the  height  of 
the  tower,  eight,  colossal,  looking  from  its  galleries  across  the  plains  of 
France.  See  drawing  in  V telle t le  Due,  under  article  “Clocher.” 


892 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOIJ)  USE 


6,  a.  Perseverance,  the  grandest  spiritual  form  of  the  virtue 

commonly  called  ‘Fortitude.’  Usually,  overcom- 
ing or  tearing  a lion  ; here,  caressing  one,  and  hold - 
ing  her  crown.  “Hold  fast  that  which  thou  hast, 
that  no  man  take  thy  crown.” 

0,  b.  Atheism,  leaving  his  shoes  at  the  church  door.  The 
infidel  fool  is  always  represented  in  twelfth  and 
thirteenth  century  MS.  as  barefoot — the  Christian 
having  “his  feet  shod  with  the  preparation  of  the 
Gospel  of  Peace.”  Compare  “How  beautiful  are 
thy  feet  with  shoes,  oh  Prince’s  Daughter  ! ” 

7,  a.  Faith,  holding  cup  with  cross  above  it,  her  accepted 

symbol  throughout  ancient  Europe.  It  is  also  an 
enduring  one,  for,  all  differences  of  Church  put 
aside,  the  words,  “ Except  ye  eat  the  flesh  of  the 
Son  of  Man  and  Drink  His  blood,  ye  have  no  life 
in  you,”  remain  in  their  mystery,  to  be  understood 
only  by  those  who  have  learned  the  sacredness  of 
food,  in  all  times  and  places,  and  the  laws  of  life 
and  spirit,  dependent  on  its  acceptance,  refusal, 
and  distribution. 

7,  b.  Idolatry,  kneeling  to  a monster.  The  contrary  of 
Faith — not  want  of  Faith.  Idolatry  is  faith  in  the 
wrong  thing,  and  quite  distinct  from  Faith  in  No 
thing  (6,  b),  the  “Dixit  Insipiens.”  Very  wise  men 
may  be  idolaters,  but  they  cannot  be  atheists. 

S,  a.  Hope,  with  Gonfalon  Standard  and  distant  crown  ; as 
opposed  to  the  constant  crown  of  Fortitude  (6,  a). 

The  Gonfalon  (Gund,  war,  falir,  standard,  accord- 
to  Poitevin’s  dictionary),  is  the  pointed  ensign  of 
forward  battle  ; essentially  sacred  ; hence  the  con- 
stant name  “ Gonfaloniere  ” of  the  battle  standard- 
bearers  of  the  Italian  republics. 

Hope  has  it,  because  she  fights  forward  always  to 
her  aim,  or  at  least  has  the  joy  of  seeing  it  draw 
nearer.  Faith  and  Fortitude  wait,  as  St.  John  in 
prison,  but  un offended.  Hope  is,  however,  put 
under  St.  James,  because  of  the  7th  and  8th  verses 


TIIE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


393 


of  his  last  chapter,  ending  “Stablish  your  hearts, 
for  the  coming  of  the  Lord  draweth  nigh.”  It  is 
he  who  examines  Dante  on  the  nature  of  Hope. 
‘Par.,’  c.  xxv.,  and  compare  Cary’s  notes. 

S,  b.  Despair,  stabbing  herself.  Suicide  not  thought  heroic 
or  sentimental  in  the  13  th  century  ; and  no  Gothic 
Morgue  built  beside  Somme. 

9,  a.  Charity,  bearing  shield  with  woolly  ram,  and  giving 
a mantle  to  a naked  beggar.  The  old  wool  manu- 
facture of  Amiens  having  this  notion  of  its  purpose 
— namely,  to  clothe  the  poor  first,  the  rich  after- 
wards. No  nonsense  talked  in  those  days  about 
the  evil  consequences, of  indiscriminate  charity. 

9,  b.  Avarice,  with  coffer  and  money.  The  modern,  alike 

English  and  Amienois,  notion  of  the  Divine  con- 
summation of  the  wool  manufacture. 

1 0,  a.  Chastity,  shield  with  the  Phoenix.* 

1 0,  b.  Lust,  a too  violent  kiss. 

S \ ? a.  Wisdom  : shield  with,  I think,  an  eatable  root ; mean- 
ing temperance,  as  the  beginning  of  wisdom. 

I I , b.  Folly,  the  ordinary  type  used  in  all  early  Psalters,  of 
a glutton,  armed  with  a club.  Both  this  vice  and 
virtue  are  the  earthly  wisdom  and  folly,  completing 
the  spiritual  wisdom  and  folly  opposite  under  St. 
Matthew’.  Temperance,  the  complement  of  Obedi- 
ence, and  Covetousness,  with  violence,  that  of 
Atheism. 

a.  Humility,  shield  wdth  dove. 

I b.  Pride,  falling  from  his  horse. 

* For  the  sake  of  comparing  the  pollution,  and  reversal  of  its  once 
glorious  religion,  in  the  modern  French  mind,  it  is  worth  the  reader's 
while  to  ask  at  M.  Goyer’s  (Place  St.  Denis)  for  the  ‘Journal  de  St. 
Nicholas’  for  1880,  and  look  at  the  ‘ Plienix,’  as  drawn  on  p.  610. 
The  story  is  meant  to  he  moral,  and  the  Phoenix  there  represents  Ava- 
rice, but  the  entire  destruction  of  all  sacred  and  poetical  tradition  in  a 
child’s  mind  by  such  a picture  is  an  immorality  which  would  neutralize 
a year’s  preaching.  To  make  it  worth  M.  Goyer’s  while  to  show  you 
the  number,  buy  the  one  with  ‘les  conclusions  de  Jeanie  ’ in  it,  p.  887 : 
the  church  scene  (with  dialogue)  in  the  text  is.lovely. 


“ OUR  FATHERS.  HAVE  TOLD  US.” 


394 

42.  All  these  quatrefoils  are  rather  symbolic  than  represen-, 
tative  ; and,  since  their  purpose  was  answered  enough  if  their 
sign  was  understood,  they  have  been  entrusted  to  a much  in- 
ferior workman  than  the  one  who  carved  the  now  sequent 
series  under  the  Prophets.  Most  of  these  subjects  represent 
an  historical  fact,  or  a scene  spoken  of  by  the  prophet  as  a 
real  vision ; and  they  have  in  general  been  executed  by  the 
ablest  hands  at  the  architect’s  command. 

With  the  interpretation  of  these,  I have  given  again  the 
name  of  the  prophet  whose  life  or  prophecy  they  illustrate. 

t 3.  Isaiah. 

1 3,  a.  “I  saw  the  Lord  sitting  upon  a throne  ” (vi.  1). 

The  vision  of  the  throne  “ high  and  lifted  up  * 
between  seraphim. 

1 3,  b.  “ Lo,  this  hath  touched  thy  lips  ” (vi.  7). 

The  Angel  stands  before  the  prophet,  and  holds, 
or  rather  held,  the  coal  with  tongs,  which  have 
been  finely  undercut,  but  are  now  broken  away, 
only  a fragment  remaining  in  his  hand. 

I 4.  Jeremiah. 

\ 4,  a.  The  burial  of  the  girdle  (xiii.  4,  5). 

The  prophet  is  digging  by  the  shore  of  Eu- 
phrates, represented  by  vertically  winding  furrows 
down  the  middle  of  the  tablet.  Note,  the  transla- 
tion should  be  “ hole  in  the  ground,”  not  “ rock.” 
I 4f  b.  The  breaking  of  the  yoke  (xxviii.  10). 

From  the  prophet  Jeremiah’s  neck  ; it  is  here 
represented  as  a doubled  and  redoubled  chain. 

fi  5.  Ezekiel. 

SB,  a.  Wheel  within  wheel  (i.  16). 

The  prophet  sitting  ; before  him  two  wheels  of 
equal  size,  one  involved  in  the  ring  of  the  other. 

1 5,  b.  “ Son  of  man,  set  thy  face  toward  Jerusalem  ” (xxi.  2). 

The  prophet  before  the  gate  of  Jerusalem. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


395 


I 0.  Daniel. 

1 0,  a.  “ He  hath  shut  the  lions’  mouths  ” (vi.  22). 

Daniel  holding  a book,  the  lions  treated  as  her- 
aldic supporters.  The  subject  is  given  with  more 
animation  farther  on  in  the  series  (24  b). 

16,  b.  “In  the  same  hour  came  forth  fingers  of  a Man’s 

hand”  (v.  5). 

Belshazzar’s  feast  represented  by  the  king  alone, 
seated  at  a small  oblong  table.  Beside  him  the 
youth  Daniel,  looking  only  fifteen  or  sixteen,  grace- 
ful and  gentle,  interprets.  At  the  side  of  the  qua- 
trefoil,  out  of  a small  wreath  of  cloud,  comes  a 
small  bent  hand,  writing,  as  if  with  a pen  upside 
down  on  a piece  of  Gothic  wall.* 

For  modern  bombast  as  opposed  to  old  simplic- 
ity, compare  the  Belshazzar’s  feast  of  John  Martin  ! 

43.  The  next  subject  begins  the  series  of  the  minor  prophets. 

8 7.  Hosea. 

17,  a.  “ So  I bought  her  to  me  for  fifteen  pieces  of  silver  and 

an  homer  of  barley  ” (iii.  2). 

The  prophet  pouring  the  grain  and  the  silver  into 
the  lap  of  the  woman,  “beloved  of  her  friend.” 
The  carved  coins  are  each  wrought  with  the  cross, 
and,  I believe,  legend  of  the  French  contemporary 
coin. 

17,  b.  “Bo  will  I also  be  for  thee ” (iii.  3). 

He  puts  a ring  on  her  finger. 

! 8.  Joel. 

18,  a.  The  sun  and  moon  lightless  (ii.  10). 

The  sun  and  moon  as  two  small  flat  pellets,  up 
in  the  external  moulding. 

18,  b.  The  barked  fig-tree  and  waste  vine  (i.  7). 

Note  the  continual  insistance  on  the  blight  of 
vegetation  as  a Divine  punishment,  19  d. 

* I fear  this  hand  has  been  broken  since  I described  it ; at  all  events, 

it  is  indistinguishable  shapeless  in  the  photograph  (No.  10  of  the  series. ) 


396  “ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US.” 

I 9.  Amos. 

To  the  front. 

1 9,  a.  “The  Lord  will  cry  from  Zion  ” (i.  2). 

Christ  appears  with  crossletted  nimbus. 

I 0,  b.  “ The  habitations  of  the  shepherds  shall  mourn  ” (i.  2). 

Amos  with  the  shepherd’s  hooked  or  knotted 
staff,  and  wicker-worked  bottle,  before  his  tent. 
(Architecture  in  right  hand  foil  restored.) 

Inside  Porch. 

19,  c.  The  Lord  with  the  mason’s  line  (vii.  8). 

Christ,  again  here,  and  henceforward  always, 
with  crosslet  nimbus,  has  a large  trowel  in  His 
hand,  which  He  lays  on  the  top  of  a half-built  wall. 
There  seems  a line  twisted  round  the  handle. 

19,  d.  The  place  where  it  rained  not  (iv.  7). 

Amos  is  gathering  the  leaves  of  the  fruitless  vine, 
to  feed  the  sheep,  who  find  no  grass.  One  of  the 
finest  of  the  reliefs. 

20-  Obadiah. 

Inside  Porch. 

20,  a.  “ I hid  them  in  a cave  ” (2  Kings  xviii.  13). 

Three  prophets  at  the  mouth  of  a well,  to  whom 
Obadiah  brings  loaves. 

20,  b.  “ He  fell  on  his  face  ” (xviii.  7). 

He  kneels  before  Elijah,  who  wears  his  rough 
mantle. 

To  the  front. 

20,  c.  The  captain  of  fifty. 

Elijah  (?)  speaking  to  an  armed  man  under  a 
tree. 

20,  d.  The  Messenger. 

A messenger  on  his  knees  before  a king.  I can- 
not interpret  these  two  scenes  (20  c and  20  d). 
The  uppermost  may  mean  the  dialogue  of  Elijah 
with  the  captains,  (2  Kings  i.  2),  and  the  lower  one, 
the  return  of  the  messengers  (2  Kings  i.  5). 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


397 


2 1 b Jonah. 

2ly  a.  Escaped  from  the  sea. 

21,  b.  Under  the  gourd.  A small  grasshopper-like  beast 

gnawing  the  gourd  stem.  I should  like  to  know 
what  insects  do  attack  the  Amiens  gourds.  This  may 
be  an  entomological  study,  for  aught  we  know. 

22.  Micah. 

To  the  front . 

22 , a.  The  Tower  of  the  Flock  (iv.  8). 

The  tower  is  wrapped  in  clouds,  God  appearing 
above  it. 

22,  b.  Each  shall  rest  and  “ none  shall  make  them  afraid  ” 
(iv.  4). 

A man  and  his  wife  “under  his  vine  and  fig-tree.” 
Inside  Porch. 

22,  c.  “ Swords  into  ploughshares  ” (iv.  3). 

Nevertheless,  two  hundred  years  after  these  medal- 
lions were  cut,  the  sword  manufacture  had  become  a 
staple  in  Amiens  ! Not  to  her  advantage. 

22,  d.  “ Spears  into  pruning-hooks  ” (iv.  3). 

23.  Nahum. 

Inside  Porch . 

23,  a.  “ None  shall  look  back  ” (ii.  8). 

23,  b.  The  Burden  of  Nineveh  (i.  1)  * 

* The  statue  of  the  prophet,  above,  is  the  grandest  of  the  entire 
series;  and  note  especially  the  “diadema”  of  his  own  luxuriant  hair 
plaited  like  a maiden's,  indicating  the  Achillean  force  of  this  most  ter- 
rible of  the  prophets.  (Compare  ‘ Fors  Clavigera,’  Letter  LXV.,  vol.  iii.  p. 
203.)  For  the  rest,  this  long  flowing  hair  was  always  one  of  the  insignia 
of  the  Frankish  kings,  and  their  way  of  dressing  both  hair  and  beard 
may  be  seen  more  nearly  and  definitely  in  the  angle-sculptures  of  the 
long  font  in  the  north  transept,  the  most  interesting  piece  of  work  in 
the  whole  cathedral,  in  an  antiquarian  sense,  and  of  much  artistic  value 
also.  (See  ante  chap.  ii.  p.  50.) 


398 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US. 


To  the  front. 

23,  c.  “ Thy  Princes  and  thy  great  ones  ” (iii.  17). 

23.  a,  b,  and  c,  are  all  incapable  of  sure  interpretation.  The 
prophet  in  a is  pointing  down  to  a little  hill,  said  by 
the  Pere  Boze  to  be  covered  with  grasshoppers.  I 
can  only  copy  what  he  says  of  them. 

23,  d.  “ Untimely  figs  ” (iii.  12). 

Three  people  beneath  a fig-tree  catch  its  falling 
fruit  in  their  mouths. 

24.  Habakkuk. 

24,  a.  “I  will  watch  to  see  what  he  will  say  unto  me  ” 

(ii.  1). 

The  prophet  is  writing  on  his  tablet  to  Christ’s 
dictation. 

24,  b.  The  ministry  to  Daniel. 

The  traditional  visit  to  Daniel.  An  angel  carries 
Habakkuk  by  the  hair  of  his  head  ; the  prophet  has 
a loaf  of  bread  in  each  hand.  They  break  through 
the  roof  of  the  cave.  Daniel  is  stroking  one  young 
lion  on  the  back  ; the  head  of  another  is  thrust  care- 
lessly under  his  arm.  Two  more  are  gnawing  bones 
in  the  bottom  of  the  cave. 

25.  Zephaniah. 

To  the  front. 

25,  a.  The  Lord  strikes  Ethiopia  (ii.  12). 

Christ  striking  a city  with  a sword.  Note  that  all 
violent  actions  are  in  these  bas-reliefs  feebly  or 
ludicrously  expressed  ; quiet  ones  always  right. 

25,  b.  The  beasts  in  Nineveh  (ii.  15). 

Very  fine.  All  kinds  of  crawling  things  among  the 
tottering  walls,  and  peeping  out  of  their  rents  and 
crannies.  A monkey  sitting  squat,  developing  into 
a demon,  reverses  the  Darwinian  theory. 


TEE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


399 


Inside  Porch. 

25,  c.  The  Lord  visits  Jerusalem  (i.  12). 

Christ  passing  through  the  streets  of  Jerusalem, 
with  a lantern  in  each  hand. 

25,  d . The  Hedgehog  and  Bittern*  (ii.  14). 

With  a singing  bird  in  a cage  in  the  window. 

28.  Haggai. 

Inside  Porch. 

20,  a.  The  houses  of  the  princes,  omees  de  lambris  (i.  4). 

A perfectly  built  house  of  square  stones  gloomily 
strong,  the  grating  (of  a prison  ?)  in  front  of  founda- 
tion. 

20,  b.  The  Heaven  is  stayed  from  dew  (i.  10). 

The  heavens  as  a projecting  mass,  with  stars,  sun, 
and  moon  on  surface.  Underneath,  two  withered 
trees. 

To  the  front. 

26,  c.  The  Lord’s  temple  desolate  (i.  4). 

The  falling  of  the  temple,  “not  one  stone  left  on 
another,”  grandly  loose.  Square  stones  again.  Ex- 
amine the  text  (i.  6). 

26,  d.  “Thus  saith  the  Lord  of  Hosts”  (i.  7). 

Christ  pointing  up  to  His  ruined  temple. 

27.  Zechariah. 

27 , a.  The  lifting  up  of  Iniquity  (v.  6 to  9). 

Wickedness  in  the  Ephah. 

27,  b.  “The  angel  that  spake  to  me  ” (iv.  1). 

The  prophet  almost  reclining,  a glorious  winged 
angel  hovering  out  of  cloud. 

28.  Malachi. 

28,  a.  “Ye  have  wounded  the  Lord  ” (ii.  17). 

The  priests  are  thrusting  Christ  through  with  a 
barbed  lance,  whose  point  comes  out  at  His  back. 

*See  ante  p.  117,  note. 


400 


“OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US.” 


2S?  b.  “ This  commandment  is  to  you  ” (ii.  1). 

In  these  panels,  the  undermost  is  often  introduc- 
tory to  the  one  above,  an  illustration  of  it.  It  is 
perhaps  chapter  i.  verse  6,  that  is  meant  to  be 
spoken  here  by  the  sitting  figure  of  Christ,  to  the 
indignant  priests. 

44.  With  this  bas-relief  terminates  the  series  of  sculpture 
in  illustration  of  Apostolic  and  Prophetic  teaching,  which  con- 
stitutes what  I mean  by  the  “ Bible  ” of  Amiens.  But  the 
two  lateral  porches  contain  supplementary  subjects  necessary 
for  completion  of  the  pastoral  and  traditional  teaching  ad- 
dressed to  her  people  in  that  day. 

The  Northern  Porch,  dedicated  to  her  first  missionary  St. 
Firmin,  has  on  its  central  pier  his  statue  ; above,  on  the  flat 
field  of  the  back  of  the  arch,  the  story  of  the  finding  of  his 
body  ; on  the  sides  of  the  porch,  companion  saints  and  angels 
in  the  following  order  : — 


CENTRAL  STATUE. 

St.  Firmin. 

Southern  (left)  side. 

41.  St.  Firmin  the  Confessor. 

42.  St.  Domice. 

43.  St.  Honore. 

44.  St.  Salve. 

40.  St.  Quentin. 

46.  St.  Gentian. 

Northern  (right)  side. 

47.  St.  Geoftroy. 

48.  An  angel. 

49.  St.  Fuscien,  martyr. 

60.  St.  Victoric,  martyr. 

51.  An  angel. 

52,  St.  Ulpha. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


401 


45.  Of  these  saints,  excepting  St.  Firmin  and  St.  Honors, 
of  whom  I have  already  spoken,*  St.  Geoffroy  is  more  real  for 
us  than  the  rest ; he  was  born  in  the  year  of  the  battle  of 
Hastings,  at  Molincourt,  in  the  Soissonais,  and  was  Bishop  of 
Amiens  from  1104  to  1150.  A man  of  entirely  simple,  pure, 
and  right  life  : one  of  the  severest  of  ascetics,  but  without  gloom 
— always  gentle  and  merciful.  Many  miracles  are  recorded 
of  him,  but  all  indicating  a tenour  of  life  which  was  chiefly 
miraculous  by  its  justice  and  peace.  Consecrated  at  Rlieims, 
and  attended  by  a train  of  other  bishops  and  nobles  to  his 
diocese,  he  dismounts  from  his  horse  at  St.  Acheul,  the 
place  of  St.  Firmin’s  first  tomb,  and  walks  barefoot  to  his  ca- 
thedral, along  the  causeway  now  so  defaced  : at  another  time 
he  walks  barefoot  from  Amiens  to  Picquigny  to  ask  from  the 
Vidame  of  Amiens  the  freedom  of  the  Chatelain  Adam.  He 
maintained  the  privileges  of  the  citizens,  with  the  help  of 
Louis  le  Gros,  against  the  Count  of  Amiens,  defeated  him,  and 
razed  his  castle  ; nevertheless,  the  people  not  enough  obeying 
him  in  the  order  of  their  life,  he  blames  his  own  weakness, 
rather  than  theirs,  and  retires  to  the  Grande  Chartreuse, 
holding  himself  unfit  to  be  their  bishop.  The  Carthusian  su- 
perior questioning  him  on  his  reasons  for  retirement,  and  ask- 
ing if  he  had  ever  sold  the  offices  of  the  Church,  the  Bishop 
answered,  “ My  father,  my  hands  are  pure  of  simony,  but  I 
have  a thousand  times  allowed  myself  to  be  seduced  by 
praise.” 

46  St.  Firmin  the  Confessor  was  the  son  of  the  Roman 
senator  who  received  St.  Firmin  himself.  He  preserved  the 
tomb  of  the  martyr  in  his  father’s  garden,  and  at  last  built  a 
church  over  it,  dedicated  to  our  Lady  of  martyrs,  which  was 
the  first  episcopal  seat  of  Amiens,  at  St.  Acheul,  spoken  of 
above.  St.  Ulpha  was  an  Amienoise  girl,  who  lived  in  a chalk 
cave  above  the  marshes  of  the  Somme  ; if  ever  Mr.  Murray 
provides  you  with  a comic  guide  to  Amiens,  no  doubt  the  en- 
lightened composer  of  it  will  count  much  on  your  enjoyment 
of  the  story  of  her  being  greatly  disturbed  at  her  devotions 

* See  ante  Chap.  I.,  p.  11,  for  the  history  of  St.  Firmin,  and  for 
St.  Honore  p.  97,  § 8 of  this  chapter,  with  the  reference  there  given. 


402 


“OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US." 


by  the  frogs,  and  praying  them  silent.  You  are  now,  oi 
course,  wholly  superior  to  such  follies,  and  are  sure  that  God 
cannot,  or  will  not,  so  much  as  shut  a frog’s  mouth  for  you. 
Kemember,  therefore,  that  as  He  also  now  leaves  open  the 
mouth  of  the  liar,  blasphemer,  and  betrayer,  you  must  shut 
your  own  ears  against  their  voices  as  you  can. 

Of  her  name,  St.  Wolf — or  Guelph — see  again  Miss  Yonge’s 
Christian  names.  Our  tower  of  Wolf’s  stone,  Ulverstone,  and 
Kirk  of  Ulpha,  are,  I believe,  unconscious  of  Picard  relatives. 

47.  The  other  saints  in  this  porch  are  all  in  like  manner 
provincial,  and,  as  it  were,  personal  friends  of  the  Amienois  ; 
and  under  them,  the  quatrefoils  represent  the  pleasant  order 
of  the  guarded  and  hallowed  year — the  zodiacal  signs  above, 
and  labours  of  the  months  below ; little  differing  from  the 
constant  representations  of  them — except  in  the  May  : see 
below.  The  Libra  also  is  a little  unusual  in  the  female  figure 
holding  the  scales  ; the  lion  especially  good-tempered — and 
the  * reaping  ’ one  of  the  most  beautiful  figures  in  the  whole 
series  of  sculptures  ; several  of  the  others  peculiarly  refined  and 
far-wrought.  In  Mr.  Kaltenbacher’s  photographs,  as  I have 
arranged  them,  the  bas-reliefs  may  be  studied  nearly  as  well 
as  in  the  porch  itself.  Their  order  is  as  follows,  beginning 
with  December,  in  the  left-hand  inner  corner  of  the  porch  : — 

4 I . December. — Killing  and  scalding  swine.  Above,  Capri- 
corn with  quickly  diminishing  tail ; I cannot  make 
out  the  accessories. 

42*  January. — Twin-headed,  obsequiously  served.  Aquarius 
feebler  than  most  of  the  series. 

43*  February. — Very  fine  ; warming  his  feet  and  putting 
coals  on  fire.  Fish  above,  elaborate  but  uninterest- 
ing. 

44*  March. — At  work  in  vine-furrows.  Aries  careful,  but 
rather  stupid. 

45.  April. — Feeding  his  hawk — very  pretty.  Taurus  above 

with  charming  leaves  to  eat. 

46.  May. — Very  singularly,  a middle-aged  man  sitting  under 

the  trees  to  hear  the  birds  sing ; and  Gemini  above, 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


403 


a bridegroom  and  bride.  This  quatrefoil  joins  the 
interior  angle  ones  of  Zephaniah. 

52.  June. — Opposite,  joining  the  interior  angle  ones  of 
Haggai.  Mowing.  Note  the  lovely  flowers  sculpt- 
ured all  through  the  grass.  Cancer  above,  with  his 
shell  superbly  modelled. 

3 1 , July. — Reaping.  Extremely  beautiful.  The  smiling 
lion  completes  the  evidence  that  all  the  seasons 
and  signs  are  regarded  as  alike  blessing  and  provi- 
dentially kind. 

50.  August. — Threshing.  Virgo  above,  holding  a flower, 
her  drapery  very  modern  and  confused  for  thirteenth- 
century  work. 

49.  September. — I am  not  sure  of  his  action,  whether  prun- 
ing, or  in  some  way  gathering  fruit  from  the  full- 
leaved tree.  Libra  above  ; charming. 

48a  October. — Treading  grapes.  Scorpio,  a very  traditional 
and  gentle  form — forked  in  the  tail  indeed,  but 
stingless. 

47,  November. — Sowing,  with  Sagittarius,  half  concealed 
when  this  photograph  was  taken  by  the  beautiful 
arrangements  always  now  going  on  for  some  job  or 
other  in  Erench  cathedrals  they  never  can  let 
them  alone  for  ten  minutes. 

48.  And  now,  last  of  all,  if  you  care  to  see  it,  we  will  go 
into  the  Madonna’s  porch — only,  if  you  come  at  all,  good 
Protestant  feminine  reader — come  civilly  : and  be  pleased  to 
recollect,  if  you  have,  in  known  history,  material  for  recollec- 
tion, this  (or  if  you  cannot  recollect — be  you  very  solemnly 
assured  of  this) : that  neither  Madonna-worship,  nor  Lady- 
worship  of  any  sort,  whether  of  dead  ladies  or  living  ones,  ever 
did  any  human  creature  any  harm, — but  that  Money  worship, 
Wig  worship,  Cocked-Hat-and-Feather  worship,  Plate  wor- 
ship, Pot  worship  and  Pipe  worship,  have  done,  and  are 
doing,  a great  deal, — and  that  any  of  these,  and  all,  are  quite 
million-fold  more  offensive  to  the  God  of  Heaven  and  Earth 
and  the  Stars,  than  all  the  absurdest  and  lovingest  mistakes 


404 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  ITS. 


made  by  any  generations  of  His  simple  children,  about  what 
the  Virgin-mother  could,  or  would,  or  might  do,  or  feel  for 
them. 

49.  And  next,  please  observe  this  broad  historical  fact 
about  the  three  sorts  of  Madonnas. 

There  is  first  the  Madonna  Dolorosa  ; the  Byzantine  type? 
and  Cimabue’s.  It  is  the  noblest  of  all  ; and  the  earliest;  in 
distinct  popular  influence.* 

Secondly.  The  Mad  one  Heine,  who  is  essentially  the  Frank 
and  Norman  one  ; crowned,  calm,  and  full  of  power  and  gen- 
tleness. She  is  the  one  represented  in  this  porch. 

Thirdly.  The  Madone  Nourrice,  who  is  the  Raphaelesque  and 
generally  late  and  decadence  one.  She  is  seen  here  in  a good 
French  type  in  the  south  transept  porch,  as  before  noticed. 

An  admirable  comparison  will  be  found  instituted  by  M. 
Viollet  le  Due  (the  article  ‘ Vierge,’  in  his  dictionary,  is  alto- 
gether deserving  of  the  most  attentive  study)  between  this 
statue  of  the  Queen-Madonna  of  the  southern  porch  and  the 
Nurse-Madonna  of  the  transept.  I may  perhaps  be  able  to 
get  a photograph  made  of  his  two  drawings,  side  by  side : 
but,  if  I can,  the  reader  will  please  observe  that  he  has  a little 
flattered  the  Queen,  and  a little  vulgarized  the  Nurse,  winch 
is  not  fair.  The  statue  in  this  porch  is  in  thirteenth-century 
style,  extremely  good  : but  there  is  no  reason  for  making  any 
fuss  about  it — the  earlier  Byzantine  types  being  far  grander. 

50.  The  Madonna’s  story,  in  its  main  incidents,  is  told  in 
the  series  of  statues  round  the  porch,  and  in  the  quatrefoils 
below — several  of  which  refer,  however,  to  a legend  about 
the  Magi  to  which  I have  not  had  access,  and  I am  not  sure 
of  their  interpretation. 

The  large  statues  are  on  the  left*  hand,  reading  outwards  as 
usual. 

*£9*  The  Angel  Gabriel. 

39»  Virgin  Annunciate. 

3 1 ■ Virgin  Visitant. 

St.  Elizabeth. 

* See  the  description  of  the  Madonna  of  Murano,  in  second  volume 
of  ‘ Stones  of  Venice.’ 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS, 


4015 

33m  Virgin  in  Presentation. 

34.  St.  Simeon. 

On  tlie  right  hand,  reading  outward, 

35,  36,  37 , The  three  Kings. 

33.  Herod. 

39.  Solomon. 

40.  The  Queen  of  Sheba. 

51.  I am  not  sure  of  rightly  interpreting  the  introduction 
of  these  two  last  statues  : but  I believe  the  idea  of  the  de- 
signer was  that  virtually  the  Queen  Mary  visited  Herod  when 
she  sent,  or  had  sent  for  her,  the  Magi  to  tell  him  of  her 
presence  at  Bethlehem  : and  the  contrast  between  Solomon’s 
reception  of  the  Queen  of  Sheba,  and  Herod’s  driving  out  the 
Madonna  into  Egypt,  is  dwelt  on  throughout  this  side  of  the 
porch,  with  their  several  consequences  to  the  two  Kings  and 
to  the  world. 

The  quatrefoils  underneath  the  great  statues  run  as  follows : 
Q&m  Under  Gabriel — 

a.  Daniel  seeing  the  stone  cut  out  without  hands. 

b.  Moses  and  the  burning  bush. 

30.  Under  Virgin  Annunciate — 

a.  Gideon  and  the  dew  on  the  fleece. 

b.  Moses  with  written  law,  retiring ; Aaron,  domi- 

nant, points  to  his  budding  rod. 

3 1 . Under  Virgin  Visitant — 

a.  The  message  to  Zacharias  : “ Fear  not,  for  thy 

prayer  is  heard.” 

b.  The  dream  of  Joseph  : “ Fear  not  to  take  unto 

thee  Mary  thy  wife.”  (?) 

32.  Under  St.  Elizabeth — 

a.  The  silence  of  Zacharias  : “ They  perceived  that 

he  had  seen  a vision  in  the  temple.” 

b.  “ There  is  none  of  thy  kindred  that  is  called  by  this 

name.”  “ He  wrote  saying,  His  name  is  John.” 


406 


“ OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  JJ8” 


33.  Under  Virgin  in  presentation — 

a.  Flight  into  Egypt. 

b.  Christ  with  the  Doctors. 

34.  Under  St.  Simeon — 

a.  Fall  of  the  idols  in  Egypt. 

b.  The  return  to  Nazareth. 

These  two  last  quatrefoils  join  the  beautiful  c and  d of 
Amos. 

Then  on  the  opposite  side,  under  the  Queen  of  Sheba, 
and  joining  the  a and  b of  Obadiah — 

40.  a.  Solomon  entertains  the  Queen  of  Sheba.  The 
Grace  cup. 

b.  Solomon  teaches  the  Queen  of  Sheba.  “ God  is 
above.  ” 

39a  Under  Solomon — 

a.  Solomon  on  his  throne  of  judgment. 

b.  Solomon  praying  before  his  temple-gate. 

SB:  Under  Herod — 

A.  Massacre  of  Innocents. 

b.  Herod  orders  the  ship  of  the  Kings  to  be  burned. 
B70  Under  the  third  King — 

a.  Herod  inquires  of  the  Kings. 

b.  Burning  of  the  ship. 

38.  Under  the  second  King — 

a.  Adoration  in  Bethlehem  ? — not  certain. 

b.  The  voyage  of  the  Kings. 

35.  Under  the  first  King — 

a.  The  Star  in  the  East. 

b.  “Being  warned  in  a dream  that  they  should  not 

return  to  Herod.” 

I have  no  doubt  of  finding  out  in  time  the  real  sequence  of 
these  subjects  : but  it  is  of  little  import — this  group  of  quatre- 
foils being  of  less  interest  than  the  rest,  and  that  of  the  Mas- 
sacre of  the  Innocents  curiously  illustrative  of  the  incapability 
of  the  sculptor  to  give  strong  action  or  passion. 

But  into  questions  respecting  the  art  of  these  bas-reliefs  I 
do  not  here  attempt  to  enter.  They  were  never  intended  to 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


407 


serve  as  more  than  signs,  or  guides  to  thought.  And  if  the 
reader  follows  this  guidance  quietly,  he  may  create  for  him- 
self better  pictures  in  his  heart  ; and  at  all  events  may  recog- 
nize these  following  general  truths,  as  their  united  message. 

52.  First,  that  throughout  the  Sermon  on  this  Amiens 
Mount,  Christ  never  appears,  or  is  for  a moment  thought  of, 
as  the  Crucified,  nor  as  the  Dead  : but  as  the  Incarnate  Word 
— as  the  present  Friend — as  the  Prince  of  Peace  on  Earth, — 
and  as  the  Everlasting  King  in  Heaven.  What  His  life  is, 
what  His  commands  are,  and  what  His  judgment  will  be,  are 
the  things  here  taught  : not  what  He  once  did,  nor  what  He 
once  suffered,  but  what  He  is  now  doing — and  what  He  re- 
quires us  to  do.  That  is  the  pure,  joyful,  beautiful  lesson  of 
Christianity  ; and  the  fall  from  that  faith,  and  all  the  corrup- 
tions of  its  abortive  practice,  may  be  summed  briefly  as  the 
habitual  contemplation  of  Christ’s  death  instead  of  his  Life, 
and  the  substitution  of  His  past  suffering  for  our  present 
duty. 

53.  Then,  secondly,  though  Christ  bears  not  His  cross, 
the  mourning  prophets, — the  persecuted  apostles — and  the 
martyred  disciples  do  bear  theirs.  For  just  as  it  is  well  for 
you  to  remember  what  your  undying  Creator  is  doing  for  you 
— it  is  well  for  you  to  remember  what  your  dying  fellow- 
creatures  hare  done  : the  Creator  you  may  at  your  pleasure 
deny  or  defy — the  Martyr  you  can  only  forget ; deny,  you  can- 
not. Every  stone  of  this  building  is  cemented  with  his  blood, 
and  there  is  no  furrow  of  its  pillars  that  was  not  ploughed  by 
Iris  pain. 

54.  Keeping,  then,  these  things  in  your  heart,  look  back 
now  to  the  central  statue  of  Christ,  and  hear  His  message 
with  understanding.  He  holds  the  Book  of  the  Eternal  Law 
in  His  left  hand  ; with  His  right  He  blesses, — but  blesses  on 
condition.  “This  do,  and  thou  shalt  live;”  nay,  in  stricter 
and  more  piercing  sense,  This  be,  and  thou  shalt  live  : to  show 
Mercy  is  nothing — thy  soul  must  be  full  of  mercy  ; to  be  pure 
in  act  is  nothing — thou  shalt  be  pure  in  heart  also. 

And  with  this  further  word  of  the  unabolished  law — “ This 
if  thou  do  not,  this  if  thou  art  not,  thou  shalt  die.” 


408 


uOUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US” 

55.  Die  (whatever  Death  means) — totally  and  irrevocably. 
There  is  no  word  in  thirteenth-century  Theology  of  the  pardon 
(in  our  modern  sense)  of  sins  ; and  there  is  none  of  the  Pur- 
gatory of  them.  Above  that  image  of  Christ  with  us,  our 
Friend,  is  set  the  image  of  Christ  over  us,  our  Judge.  For 
this  present  life — here  is  His  helpful  Presence.  After  this 
life — there  is  His  coming  to  take  account  of  our  deeds,  and  of 
our  desires  in  them  ; and  the  parting  asunder  of  the  Obedient 
from  the  Disobedient,  of  the  Loving  from  the  Unkind,  with 
no  hope  given  to  the  last  of  recall  or  reconciliation.  I do  not 
know  what  commenting  or  softening  doctrines  were  written 
in  frightened  minuscule  by  the  Fathers,  or  hinted  in  hesitat- 
ing whispers  by  the  prelates  of  the  early  Church.  But  I 
know  that  the  language  of  every  graven  stone  and  every  glow- 
ing window, — of  things  daily  seen  and  universally  understood 
by  the  people,  was  absolutely  and  alone,  this  teaching  of 
Moses  from  Sinai  in  the  beginning,  and  of  St.  John  from 
Patmos  in  the  end,  of  the  Revelation  of  God  to  Israel. 

This  it  was,  simply — sternly — and  continually,  for  the  great 
three  hundred  years  of  Christianity  in  her  strength  (eleventh, 
twelfth,  and  thirteenth  centuries),  and  over  the  whole  breadth 
and  depth  of  her  dominion,  from  Iona  to  Cyrene, — and  from 
Calpe  to  Jerusalem.  At  what  time  the  doctrine  of  Purgatory 
was  openly  accepted  by  Catholic  Doctors,  I neither  know  nor 
care  to  know.  It  was  first  formalized  by  Dante,  but  never 
accepted  for  an  instant  by  the  sacred  artist  teachers  of  his 
time — or  by  those  of  any  great  school  or  time  whatsoever.* 


* Tlie  most  authentic  foundations  of  the  Purgatorial  scheme  in  art 
teaching  are  in  the  renderings,  subsequent  to  the  thirteenth  century, 
of  the  verse  “ by  which  also  He  went  and  preached  unto  the  spirits  in 
prison,”  forming  gradually  into  the  idea  of  the  deliverance  of  the  wait- 
ing saints  from  the  power  of  the  grave. 

In  literature  and  tradition,  the  idea  is  originally,  I believe,  Platonic ; 
certainly  not  Homeric.  Egyptian  possibly — but  I have  read  nothing  yet 
of  the  recent  discoveries  in  Egypt.  Not,  however,  quite  liking  to  leave 
the  matter  in  the  complete  emptiness  of  my  own  resources,  I have  ap- 
pealed to  my  general  investigator,  Mr.  Anderson  (James  R.),  who  writes 
as  follows : — 

‘ * There  is  no  possible  question  about  the  doctrine  and  universal  in- 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS, 


409 


56.  Neither  do  I know  nor  care  to  know — at  what  time  the 
notion  of  Justification  by  Faith,  in  the  modern  sense,  first  got 
itself  distinctively  fixed  in  the  minds  of  the  heretical  sects  and 
schools  of  the  North.  Practically  its  strength  was  founded  by 
its  first  authors  on  an  asceticism  which  differed  from  monastic 
rule  in  being  only  able  to  destroy,  never  to  build  ; and  in  en- 
deavouring to  force  what  severity  it  thought  proper  for  itself 
on  everybody  else  also ; and  so  striving  to  make  one  artless, 
letterless,  and  merciless  monastery  of  all  the  world.  Its  viru- 
lent effort  broke  down  amidst  furies  of  reactionary  dissolute- 

culcation  of  it,  ages  before  Dante.  Curiously  enough,  though,  the  state- 
ment of  it  in  the  Summa  Theologise  as  we  have  it  is  a later  insertion  ; 
but  I find  by  references  that  St.  Thomas  teaches  it  elsewhere.  Albertus 
Magnus  develops  it  at  length.  If  you  refer  to  the  ‘ Golden  Legend  ’ 
under  All  Souls’  Day,  you  will  see  how  the  idea  is  assumed  as  a common- 
place in  a work  meant  for  popular  use  in  the  thirteenth  century.  St. 
Gregory  (the  Pope)  argues  for  it  (Dial.  iv.  38)  on  two  scriptural  quota- 
tions : (1),  the  sin  that  is  forgiven  neither  in  hoc  sseculo  nor  in  that  which 
is  to  come , and  (2),  the  fire  which  shall  try  every  man’s  work.  I think 
Platonic  philosophy  and  the  Greek  mysteries  must  have  had  a good  deal 
to  do  with  introducing  the  idea  originally ; but  with  them — as  to  Virgil 
— it  was  part  of  the  Eastern  vision  of  a circling  stream  of  life  from  which 
only  a few  drops  were  at  intervals  tossed  to  a definitely  permanent  Ely- 
sium or  a definitely  permanent  Hell.  It  suits  that  scheme  better  than 
it  does  the  Christian  one,  which  attaches  ultimately  in  all  cases  infinite 
importance  to  the  results  of  life  in  hoc  sseculo. 

“ Do  you  know  any  representation  of  Heaven  or  Hell  unconnected 
with  the  Last  Judgment  ? I don’t  remember  any,  and  as  Purgatory  is 
by  that  time  past,  this  would  account  for  the  absence  of  pictures  of  it. 

“Besides,  Purgatory  precedes  the  Resurrection — there  is  continual 
question  among  divines  what  manner  of  purgatorial  fire  it  may  be  that 
affects  spirits  separate  from  the  body — perhaps  Heaven  and  Hell,  as  op- 
posed to  Purgatory,  were  felt  to  be  picturable  because  not  only  spirits, 
but  the  risen  bodies  too  are  conceived  in  them. 

“ Bede’s  account  of  the  Ayrshire  seer’s  vision  gives  Purgatory  in  words 
very  like  Dante's  description  of  the  second  stormy  circle  in  Hell ; and 
the  angel  which  ultimately  saves  the  Scotchman  from  the  fiends  comes 
through  hell,  ‘quasi  fulgor  Stellas  micantis  inter  tenebras  ’ — 4 qual  sul 
presso  del  mattino  Per  g'li  grossi  vapor  Marte  rosseggia.’  Bede’s  name 
was  great  in  the  middle  ages.  Dante  meets  him  in  Heaven,  and.  I like 
to  hope,  may  have  been  helped  by  the  vision  of  my  fellow-countryman 
more  than  six  hundred  years  before.” 


410 


“OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US. 


ness  and  disbelief,  and  remains  now  the  basest  of  popular  sol- 
ders and  plasters  for  every  condition  of  broken  law  and  bruised 
conscience  which  interest  can  provoke,  or  hypocrisy  disguise. 

57.  With  the  subsequent  quarrels  between  the  two  great- 
sects  of  the  corrupted  church,  about  prayers  for  the  Dead, 
Indulgences  to  the  Living,  Papal  supremacies,  or  Popular  lib- 
erties, no  man,  woman,  or  child  need  trouble  themselves  in 
studying  the  history  of  Christianity  ; they  are  nothing  but  the 
squabbles  of  men,  and  laughter  of  fiends  among  its  ruins.  The 
Life,  and  Gospel,  and  Power  of  it,  are  all  written  in  the  mighty 
works  of  its  true  believers  : in  Normandy  and  Sicily,  on  river 
islets  of  France  and  in  the  river  glens  of  England,  on  the  rocks 
of  Orvieto,  and  by  the  sands  of  Arno.  But  of  all,  the  sim- 
plest, completest,  and  most  authoritative  in  its  lessons  to  the 
active  mind  of  North  Europe,  is  this  on  the  foundation  stones 
of  Amiens. 

58.  Believe  it  or  not,  reader,  as  you  will : understand  only 
how  thoroughly  it  was  once  believed ; and  that  all  beautiful 
things  were  made,  and  all  brave  deeds  done  in  the  strength 
of  it — until  what  we  may  call  ‘ this  present  time/  in  which  it 
is  gravely  asked  whether  Religion  has  any  effect  on  morals,  by 
persons  who  have  essentially  no  idea  whatever  of  the  meaning 
of  either  Religion  or  Morality. 

Concerning  which  dispute,  this  much  perhaps  you  may 
have  the  patience  finally  to  read,  as  the  Fleche  of  Amiens 
fades  in  the  distance,  and  your  carriage  rushes  towards  the 
Isle  of  France,  which  now  exhibits  the  most  admired  patterns 
of  European  Art,  intelligence,  and  behaviour. 

59.  All  human  creatures,  in  all  ages  and  places  of  the 
world,  who  have  had  warm  affections,  common  sense  and 
self-command,  have  been,  and  are,  Naturally  Moral.  Human 
nature  in  its  fulness  is  necessarily  Moral, — without  Love,  it  is 
inhuman,  without  sense,*  inhuman, — without  discipline,  in- 
human. 

In  the  exact  proportion  in  which  men  are  bred  capable  of 
these  things,  and  are  educated  to  love,  to  think,  and  to  en- 


I don’t  mean  aestliesis,— but  wn,  if  you  must  talk  in  Greek  slang. 


THE  BIBLE  OF  AMIENS. 


411 


dure,  they  become  noble, — live  happily — die  calmly : are  re- 
membered with  perpetual  honour  by  their  race,  and  for  the 
perpetual  good  of  it.  All  wise  men  know  and  have  known 
these  things  since  the  form  of  man  was  separated  from  the 
dust.  The  knowledge  and  enforcement  of  them  have  nothing 
to  do  with  religion : a good  and  wTise  man  differs  from  a bad 
and  idiotic  one,  simply  as  a good  dog  from  a cur,  and  as  any 
manner  of  dog  from  a wolf  or  a weasel.  And  if  you  are  to  be- 
lieve in,  or  preach  without  half  believing  in,  a spiritual  world 
or  law — only  in  the  hope  that  whatever  you  do,  or  anybody 
else  does,  that  is  foolish  or  beastly,  may  be  in  them  and  by 
them  mended  and  patched  and  pardoned  and  worked  up 
again  as  good  as  new — the  less  you  believe  in — and  most 
solemnly,  the  less  you  talk  about — a spiritual  word,  the 
better. 

60.  But  if,  loving  well  the  creatures  that  are  like  yourself, 
you  feel  that  you  would  love  still  more  dearly,  creatures 
better  than  yourself — were  they  revealed  to  you  ; — if  striving 
with  all  your  might  to  mend  what  is  evil,  near  you  and 
around,  you  would  fain  look  for  a day  when  some  Judge  of 
all  the  Earth  shall  wholly  do  right,  and  the  little  hills  rejoice 
on  every  side ; if,  parting  with  the  companions  that  have 
given  you  all  the  best  joy  you  had  on  Earth,  you  desire  ever 
to  meet  their  eyes  again  and  clasp  their  hands,- — where  eyes 
shall  no  more  be  dim,  nor  hands  fail ; — if,  preparing  your- 
selves to  lie  down  beneath  the  grass  in  silence  and  loneliness, 
seeing  no  more  beauty,  and  feeling  no  more  gladness — you 
would  care  for  the  promise  to  you  of  a time  when  you  should 
see  God’s  light  again,  and  know  the  things  you  have  longed 
to  know,  and  walk  in  the  peace  of  everlasting  Love — then , the 
Hope  of  these  things  to  you  is  religion,  the  Substance  of 
them  in  your  life  is  Faith.  And  in  the  power  of  them,  it  is 
promised  us,  that  the  kingdoms  of  this  world  shall  yet  be- 
come the  kingdoms  of  our  Lord  and  of  His  Christ. 


412 


“OUR  FATHERS  HAVE  TOLD  US. 


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INAUGURAL  ADDRESS 

DELIVERED  AT  THE 

CAMBRIDGE  SCHOOL  OF  ART, 


OCTOBER  29th,  1858. 


■ 10  f\  I 


■ 


_ 


INAUGURAL  ADDRESS 


DELIVERED  AT  THE 

CAMBBIDGrE  SCHOOL  OF  ABT, 

OCTOBER  29th,  1858. 

I suppose  the  persons  interested  in  establishing  a School  of 
Art  for  workmen  may  in  the  main  be  divided  into  two  classes, 
namely,  first,  those  who  chiefly  desire  to  make  the  men  them- 
selves happier,  wiser,  and  better ; and  secondly,  those  who 
desire  to  enable  them  to  produce  better  and  more  valuable 
work.  These  two  objects  may,  of  course,  be  kept  both  in 
view  at  the  same  time ; nevertheless,  there  is  a wide  differ- 
ence in  the  spirit  with  which  we  shall  approach  our  task,  ac- 
cording to  the  motives  of  these  two  which  weighs  most  with 
us — a difference  great  enough  to  divide,  as  I have  said,  the 
promoters  of  any  such  scheme  into  two  distinct  classes ; one 
philanthropic  in  the  gist  of  its  aim,  and  the  other  commercial 
in  the  gist  of  its  aim  ; one  desiring  the  workman  to  be  better 
informed  chiefly  for  his  own  sake,  and  the  other  chiefly  that 
he  may  be  enabled  to  produce  for  us  commodities  precious  in 
themselves,  and  which  shall  successfully  compete  with  those 
of  other  countries. 

And  this  separation  in  motives  must  lead  also  to  a distinc- 
tion in  the  machinery  of  the  work.  The  philanthropists  ad- 
dress themselves,  not  to  the  artisan  merely,  but  to  the  la- 
bourer in  general,  desiring  in  any  possible  way  to  refine  the 
habits  or  increase  the  happiness  of  our  whole  working  popu- 
lation, by  giving  them  new  recreations  or  new  thoughts  : and 
the  principles  of  Art-education  adopted  in  a school  which  has 
this  wide  but  somewhat  indeterminate  aim,  are,  or  should  be, 


416 


INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  AT  THE 


very  different  from  those  adopted  in  a school  meant  for  the 
special  instruction  of  the  artisan  in  his  own  business.  I do 
not  think  this  distinction  is  yet  firmly  enough  fixed  in  our 
minds,  or  calculated  upon  in  our  plans  of  operation.  We  have 
hitherto  acted,  it  seems  to  me,  under  a vague  impression  that 
the  arts  of  drawing  and  painting  might  be,  up  to  a certain 
point,  taught  in  a general  way  to  every  one,  and  would  do 
every  one  equal  good  ; and  that  each  class  of  operatives  might 
afterwards  bring  this  general  knowledge  into  use  in  their  own 
trade,  according  to  its  requirements.  Now,  that  is  not  so. 
A wood-carver  needs  for  his  business  to  learn  drawing  in  quite 
a different  way  from  a china-painter,  and  a jew7eller  from  a 
worker  in  iron.  They  must  be  led  to  study  quite  different 
characters  in  the  natural  forms  they  introduce  in  their  various 
manufacture.  It  is  of  no  use  to  teach  an  iron-worker  to  observe 
the  down  on  a peach,  and  of  none  to  teach  laws  of  atmos- 
pheric effect  to  a carver  in  wood.  So  far  as  their  business  is 
concerned,  their  brains  would  be  vainly  occupied  by  such 
things,  and  they  would  be  prevented  from  pursuing,  with 
enough  distinctness  or  intensity,  the  qualities  of  Art  which 
can  alone  be  expressed  in  the  materials  with  which  they  each 
have  to  do. 

Now,  I believe  it  to  be  wholly  impossible  to  teach  special 
application  of  Art  principles  to  various  trades  in  a single 
school.  That  special  application  can  be  only  learned  rightly 
by  the  experience  of  years  in  the  particular  work  required. 
The  power  of  each  material,  and  the  difficulties  connected 
with  its  treatment,  are  not  so  much  to  be  taught  as  to  be  felt ; 
it  is  only  by  repeated  touch  and  continued  trial  beside  the 
forge  or  the  furnace,  that  the  goldsmith  can  find  out  how  to 
govern  his  gold,  or  the  glass-worker  his  crystal ; and  it  is 
only  by  watching  and  assisting  the  actual  practice  of  a master 
in  the  business,  that  the  apprentice  can  learn  the  efficient 
secrets  of  manipulation,  or  perceive  the  true  limits  of  the  in- 
volved conditions  of  design.  It  seems  to  me,  therefore,  that 
all  idea  of  reference  to  definite  businesses  should  be  aban- 
doned in  such  schools  as  that  just  established : we  can  have 
neither  the  materials,  the  conveniences,  nor  the  empirical  skill 


CAMBRIDGE  SCHOOL  OF  ART, \ 


417 


in  the  master,  necessary  to  make  suck  teaching  useful.  All 
specific  Art-teacliing  must  be  given  in  schools  established  by 
each  trade  for  itself : and  when  our  operatives  are  a little 
more  enlightened  on  these  matters,  there  will  be  found,  as  I 
have  already  stated  in  my  lectures  on  the  political  economy 
of  Art,  absolute  necessity  for  the  establishment  of  guilds  of 
trades  in  an  active  and  practical  form,  for  the  purposes  of  as- 
certaining the  principles  of  Art  proper  to  their  business,  and 
instructing  their  apprentices  in  them,  as  well  as  making  ex- 
periments on  materials,  and  on  newly-invented  methods  of 
procedure  ; besides  many  other  functions  which  I cannot 
now  enter  into  account  of.  All  this  for  the  present,  and  in 
a school  such  as  this,  I repeat,  we  cannot  hope  for : we  shall 
obtain  no  satisfactory  result,  unless  we  give  up  such  hope, 
and  set  ourselves  to  teaching  the  operative,  however  em- 
ployed—be  he  farmer’s  labourer,  or  manufacturer’s ; be  he 
mechanic,  artificer,  shopman,  sailor,  or  ploughman— teaching, 
I say,  as  far  as  we  can,  one  and  the  same  thing  to  all ; namely, 
Sight. 

Not  a slight  thing  to  teach,  this  : perhaps,  on  the  whole, 
the  most  important  thing  to  be  taught  in  the  whole  range  of 
teaching.  To  be  taught  to  read — what  is  the  use  of  that,  if 
you  know  not  whether  what  you  read  is  false  or  true?  To  be 
taught  to  write  or  to  speak — but  what  is  the  use  of  speaking, 
if  }tou  have  nothing  to  say  ? To  be  taught  to  think — nay, 
what  is  the  use  of  being  able  to  think,  if  you  have  nothing  to 
think  of?  But  to  be  taught  to  see  is  to  gain  word  and 
thought  at  once,  and  both  true.  There  is  a vague  acknowl- 
edgment of  this  in  the  way  people  are  continually  expressing 
their  longings  for  light,  until  all  the  common  language  of  our 
prayers  and  hymns  has  sunk  into  little  more  than  one  monot- 
onous metaphor,  dimly  twisted  into  alternate  languages, — 
asking  first  in  Latin  to  be  illuminated  ; and  then  in  English 
to  be  enlightened  ; and  then  in  Latin  again  to  be  delivered 
out  of  obscurity  ; and  then  in  English  to  be  delivered  out  of 
darkness  ; and  then  for  beams,  and  rays,  and  suns,  and  stars, 
and  lamps,  until  sometimes  one  wishes  that,  at  least  for  relig- 
ious purposes,  there  were  no  such  words  as  light  or  darkness 


418 


INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  AT  THE 


in  existence.  Still,  the  main  instinct  which  makes  people 
endure  this  perpetuity  of  repetition  is  a true  one  ; only  the 
main  thing  they  want  and  ought  to  ask  for  is,  not  light,  but 
Sight.  It  doesn’t  matter  how  much  light  you  have  if  you 
don’t  know  how  to  use  it.  It  may  very  possibly  put  out  your 
eyes,  instead  of  helping  them.  Besides,  we  want,  in  this 
world  of  ours,  very  often  to  be  able  to  see  in  the  dark — that’s 
the  great  gift  of  all  ; — but  at  any  rate  to  see  ; no  matter  by 
what  light,  so  only  we  can  see  things  as  they  are.  On  my 
word,  we  should  soon  make  it  a different  world,  if  we  could 
get  but  a little — ever  so  little — of  the  dervish’s  ointment  in 
the  Arabian  Nights,  not  to  show  us  the  treasures  of  the  earth, 
but  the  facts  of  it. 

However,  whether  these  things  be  generally  true  or  not,  at 
all  events  it  is  certain  that  our  immediate  business,  in  such  a 
school  as  this,  will  prosper  more  by  attending  to  eyes  than  to 
hands ; w7e  shall  always  do  most  good  by  simply  endeavouring 
to  enable  the  student  to  see  natural  objects  clearly  and  truly. 
We  ought  not  even  to  try  too  strenuously  to  give  him  the 
power  of  representing  them.  That  power  may  be  acquired, 
more  or  less,  by  exercises  which  are  no  wise  conducive  to 
accuracy  of  sight : and,  vice  versd , accuracy  of  sight  may  be 
gained  by  exercises  which  in  no  wise  conduce  to  ease  of  rep- 
resentation. For  instance,  it  very  much  assists  the  pow7er  of 
drawing  to  spend  many  hours  in  the  practice  of  washing  in 
flat  tints  ; but  all  this  manual  practice  does  not  in  the  least 
increase  the  student’s  power  of  determining  what  the  tint  of  a 
given  object  actually  is.  He  w7ould  be  more  advanced  in  the 
knowledge  of  the  facts  by  a single  hour  of  well-directed  and 
well-corrected  effort,  rubbing  out  and  putting  in  again,  lighten- 
ing, and  darkening,  and  scratching,  and  blotching,  in  patient 
endeavours  to  obtain  concordance  with  fact,  issuing  perhaps, 
after  all,  in  total  destruction  or  unpresen tability  of  the  draw- 
ing ; but  also  in  acute  perception  of  the  things  he  has  been 
attempting  to  copy  in  it.  Of  course,  there  is  always  a vast 
temptation,  felt  both  by  the  master  and  student,  to  struggle 
towards  visible  results,  and  obtain  something  beautiful,  credit- 
able, or  saleable,  in  way  of  actual  drawing : but  the  more  I 


CAMBRIDGE  SCHOOL  OF  ART. 


419 


see  of  schools,  the  more  reason  I see  to  look  with  doubt  upon 
those  which  produce  too  many  showy  and  complete  works  by 
the  pupils.  A showy  work  will  always  be  found,  on  stern 
examination  of  it,  to  have  been  done  by  some  conventional 
rule  ; — some  servile  compliance  with  directions  which  the 
student  does  not  see  the  reason  for ; and  representation  of 
truths  which  he  has  not  himself  perceived  : the  execution  of 
such  drawings  will  be  found  monotonous  and  lifeless  ; their 
light  and  shade  specious  and  formal,  but  false.  A drawing 
which  the  pupil  has  learned  much  in  doing,  is  nearly  always 
full  of  blunders  and  mishaps,  and  it  is  highly  necessary  for  the 
formation  of  a truly  public  or  universal  school  of  Art,  that  the 
masters  should  not  try  to  conceal  or  anticipate  such  blunders, 
but  only  seek  to  employ  the  pupil’s  time  so  as  to  get  the  most 
precious  results  for  his  understanding  and  his  heart,  not  for 
liis  hand. 

For,  observe,  the  best  that  you  can  do  in  the  production  of 
drawing,  or  of  draughtsmanship,  must  always  be  nothing  in 
itself,  unless  the  whole  life  be  given  to  it.  An  amateur’s 
drawing,  or  a workman’s  drawing — anybody’s  drawing  but  an 
artist’s,  is  always  valueless  in  itself.  It  may  be,  as  you  have 
just  heard  Mr.  Redgrave  tell  you,  most  precious  as  a memo- 
rial, or  as  a gift,  or  as  a means  of  noting  useful  facts  ; but  as 
Art , an  amateur’s  drawing  is  always  wholly  worthless  ; and  it 
ought  to  be  one  of  our  great  objects  to  make  the  pupil  under- 
stand and  feel  that,  and  prevent  his  trying  to  make  his  value- 
less work  look,  in  some  superficial,  hypocritical,  eye-catching, 
penny-catching  way,  like  work  that  is  really  good. 

If,  therefore,  we  have  to  do  with  pupils  belonging  to  the 
higher  ranks  of  life,  our  main  duty  will  be  to  make  them  good 
judges  of  Art,  rather  than  artists  ; for  though  I had  a month 
to  speak  to  you,  instead  of  an  hour,  time  would  fail  me  if  I 
tried  to  trace  the  various  ways  in  which  we  suffer,  nationally, 
for  want  of  powers  of  enlightened  judgment  of  Art  in  our 
upper  and  middle  classes.  Not  that  this  judgment  can  ever 
be  obtained  without  discipline  of  the  hand  : no  man  ever  was 
a thorough  judge  of  painting  who  could  not  draw  ; but  the 
drawing  should  only  be  thought  of  as  a means  of  fixing  his 


420 


INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  AT  TEE 


attention  upon  tlie  subtleties  of  the  Art  put  before  him,  or  of 
enabling  him  to  record  such  natural  facts  as  are  necessary  for 
comparison  with  it.  I should  also  attach  the  greatest  import- 
ance to  severe  limitation  of  choice  in  the  examples  submitted 
to  him.  To  study  one  good  master  till  you  understand  him 
will  teach  you  more  than  a superficial  acquaintance  with  a 
thousand  : power  of  criticism  does  not  consist  in  knowing  the 
names  or  the  manner  of  many  painters,  but  in  discerning  the 
excellence  of  a few. 

If,  on  the  contrary,  our  teaching  is  addressed  more  defi- 
nitely to  the  operative,  we  need  not  endeavour  to  render  his 
powers  of  criticism  very  acute.  About  many  forms  of  exist- 
ing Art,  the  less  he  knows  the  better.  His  sensibilities  are 
to  be  cultivated  with  respect  to  nature  chiefly  ; and  his  imagi- 
nation, if  possible,  to  be  developed,  even  though  somewhat  to 
the  disadvantage  of  his  judgment.  It  is  better  that  his  work 
should  be  bold,  than  faultless  ; and  better  that  it  should  be 
delightful,  than  discreet. 

And  this  leads  me  to  the  second,  or  commercial,  question  ; 
namely,  how  to  get  from  the  workman,  after  we  have  trained 
him,  the  best  and  most  precious  work,  so  as  to  enable  our- 
selves to  compete  with  foreign  countries,  or  develop  new 
branches  of  commerce  in  our  own. 

Many  of  us,  perhaps,  are  under  the  impression  that  plenty 
of  schooling  will  do  this  ; that  plenty  of  lecturing  will  do  it ; 
that  sending  abroad  for  patterns  will  do  it ; or  that  patience, 
time,  and  money,  and  goodwill  may  do  it.  And,  alas,  none 
of  these  things,  nor  all  of  them  put  together,  will  do  it.  If 
you  want  really  good  work,  such  as  will  be  acknowledged  by 
all  the  world,  there  is  but  one  way  of  getting  it,  and  that  is  a 
difficult  one.  You  may  offer  any  premium  you  choose  for  it 
- — but  you  will  find  it  can’t  be  done  for  premiums.  You  may 
send  for  patterns  to  the  antipodes — but  you  will  find  it  can’t 
be  done  upon  patterns.  You  may  lecture  on  the  principles  of 
Art  to  every  school  in  the  kingdom — and  you  will  find  it  can’t 
be  done  upon  principles.  You  may  wait  patiently  for  the 
progress  of  the  age — and  you  will  find  your  Art  is  unpro- 
gressive. Or  you  may  set  yourselves  impatiently  to  urge  it 


CAMBRIDGE  SCHOOL  OF  ART. 


421 


by  the  inventions  of  the  age — and  you  will  find  your  chariot 
of  Art  entirely  immovable  either  by  screw  or  paddle.  There’s 
no  way  of  getting  good  Art,  I repeat,  but  one — at  once  the 
simplest  and  most  difficult — namely,  to  enjoy  it.  Examine 
the  history  of  nations,  and  you  will  find  this  great  fact  clear 
and  unmistakable  on  the  front  of  it — that  good  Art  has  only 
been  produced  by  nations  who  rejoiced  in  it ; fed  themselves 
with  it,  as  if  it  wTere  bread ; basked  in  it,  as  if  it  were  sun- 
shine ; shouted  at  the  sight  of  it ; danced  with  the  delight  of 
it ; quarrelled  for  it  ; fought  for  it  ; starved  for  it ; did,  in 
fact,  precisely  the  opposite  with  it  of  what  we  want  to  do  with 
it — they  made  it  to  keep,  and  we  to  sell. 

And  truly  this  is  a serious  difficulty  for  us  as  a commercial 
nation.  The  very  primary  motive  with  which  we  set  about 
the  business,  makes  the  business  impossible.  The  first  and 
absolute  condition  of  the  thing’s  ever  becoming  saleable  is, 
that  we  shall  make  it  without  wanting  to  sell  it  ; nay,  rather 
with  a determination  not  to  sell  it  at  any  price,  if  once  we  get 
hold  of  it.  Try  to  make  your  Art  popular,  cheap — a fair  art- 
icle for  your  foreign  market  ; and  the  foreign  market  will  al- 
ways show  something  better.  But  make  it  only  to  please 
yourselves,  and  even  be  resolved  that  you  won’t  let  anybody 
else  have  any ; and  forthwith  you  will  find  everybody  else 
wants  it.  And  observe,  the  insuperable  difficulty  is  this  mak- 
ing it  to  please  ourselves,  while  we  are  incapable  of  pleasure. 
Take,  for  instance,  the  simplest  example,  which  we  can  all 
understand,  in  the  art  of  dress.  We  have  made  a great  fuss 
about  the  patterns  of  silk  lately  ; wanting  to  vie  with  Lyons, 
and  make  a Paris  of  London.  Well,  we  may  try  for  ever  : so 
long  as  we  don’t  really  enjoy  silk  patterns,  we  shall  never  get 
any.  And  we  don’t  enjoy  them.  Of  course,  all  ladies  like 
their  dresses  to  sit  well,  and  be  becoming  ; but  of  real  enjoy- 
ment of  the  beauty  of  the  silk,  for  the  silk’s  own  sake,  I find 
none  ; for  the  test  of  that  enjoyment  is,  that  they  would  like 
it  also  to  sit  well,  and  look  well,  on  somebody  else.  The 
pleasure  of  being  well  dressed,  or  even  of  seeing  well-dressed 
people — for  I will  suppose  in  my  fair  hearers  that  degree  of 
unselfishness — be  that  pleasure  great  or  small,  is  quite  a dif« 


422 


INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  AT  TEE 


ferent  thing  from  delight  in  the  beauty  and  play  of  the  silken 
folds  and  colours  themselves,  for  their  own  gorgeousness  or 
grace. 

I have  just  had  a remarkable  proof  of  the  total  want  of  this 
feeling  in  the  modern  mind.  I was  staying  part  of  this  sum- 
mer in  Turin,  for  the  purpose  of  studying  one  of  the  Paul 
Veroneses  there — the  presentation  of  the  Queen  of  Sheba  to 
Solomon.  Well,  one  of  the  most  notable  characters  in  this 
picture  is  the  splendour  of  its  silken  dresses  : and,  in  par- 
ticular, there  was  a piece  of  white  brocade,  with  designs  upon 
it  in  gold,  which  it  was  one  of  my  chief  objects  in  stopping  at 
Turin  to  copy.  You  may,  perhaps,  be  surprised  at  this  ; but 
I must  just  note  in  passing,  that  I share  this  weakness  of  en- 
joying dress  patterns  with  all  good  students  and  all  good 
painters.  It  doesn’t  matter  what  school  they  belong  to — Fra 
Angelico,  Perugino,  John  Bellini,  Giorgione,  Titian,  Tintoret, 
Veronese,  Leonardo  da  Vinci — no  matter  how  they  differ  in 
other  respects,  all  of  them  like  dress  patterns ; and  what  is 
more,  the  nobler  the  painter  is,  the  surer  he  is  to  do  his  pat- 
terns well. 

I stayed  then,  as  I say,  to  make  a study  of  this  white  bro- 
cade. It  generally  happens  in  public  galleries  that  the  best 
pictures  are  the  worst  placed  : and  this  Veronese  is  not  only 
hung  at  considerable  height  above  the  eye,  but  over  a door, 
through  which,  however,  as  all  the  visitors  to  the  gallery  must 
pass,  they  cannot  easily  overlook  the  picture,  though  they 
would  find  great  difficulty  in  examining  it.  Beside  this  door, 
I had  a stage  erected  for  my  work,  which  being  of  some 
height  and  rather  in  a corner,  enabled  me  to  observe,  without 
being  observed  myself,  the  impression  made  by  the  picture  on 
the  various  visitors.  It  seemed  to  me  that  if  ever  a work  of 
Art  caught  popular  attention,  this  ought  to  do  so.  It  was  of 
very  large  size  ; of  brilliant  colour,  and  of  agreeable  subject. 
There  are  about  twenty  figures  in  it,  the  principal  ones  being 
life  size  : that  of  Solomon,  though  in  the  shade,  is  by  far  the 
most  perfect  conception  of  the  young  king  in  his  pride  of 
wisdom  and  beauty  which  I know  in  the  range  of  Italian  art ; 
the  queen  is  one  of  the  loveliest  of  Veronese’s  female  figures  j 


CAMBRIDGE  SCHOOL  OF  ART. 


423 


all  the  accessories  are  full  of  grace  and  imagination  ; and  the 
finish  of  the  whole  so  perfect  that  one  day  I was  upwards  of 
two  hours  vainly  trying  to  render,  with  perfect  accuracy,  the 
curves  of  two  leaves  of  the  brocaded  silk.  The  English 
travellers  used  to  walk  through  the  room  in  considerable 
numbers  ; and  were  invariably  directed  to  the  picture  by  their 
laquais  de  place,  if  they  missed  seeing  it  themselves.  And  to 
this  painting — in  which  it  took  me  six  weeks  to  examine 
rightly  two  figures — I found  that  on  an  average,  the  English 
traveller  who  was  doing  Italy  conscientiously,  and  seeing 
everything  as  he  thought  he  ought,  gave  about  half  or  three 
quarters  of  a minute  ; but  the  flying  or  fashionable  traveller, 
who  came  to  do  as  much  as  he  could  in  a given  time,  never 
gave  more  than  a single  glance,  most  of  such  people  turning 
aside  instantly  to  a bad  landscape  hung  on  the  right,  contain- 
ing a vigorously  painted  white  wall,  and  an  opaque  green 
moat.  What  especially  impressed  me,  however,  was  that  none 
of  the  ladies  ever  stopped  to  look  at  the  dresses  in  the  Vero- 
nese. Certainly  they  were  far  more  beautiful  than  any  in  the 
shops  in  the  great  square,  yet  no  one  ever  noticed  them. 
Sometimes  when  any  nice,  sharp-looking,  bright-eyed  girl 
came  into  the  room,  I used  to  watch  her  all  the  way,  think- 
ing— “ Come,  at  least  you'll  see  what  the  Queen  of  Sheba  has 
got  on.”  But  no — on  she  would  come  carelessly,  with  a little 
toss  of  the  head,  apparently  signifying  “ nothing  in  this  room 
worth  looking  at — except  myself,”  and  so  trip  through  the 
door,  and  away. 

The  fact  is,  we  don’t  care  for  pictures : in  very  deed  we 
don’t.  The  Academy  exhibition  is  a thing  to  talk  of  and 
to  amuse  vacant  hours  ; those  who  are  rich  amongst  us 
buy  a painting  or  two,  for  mixed  reasons,  sometimes  to  fill 
the  corner  of  a passage — sometimes  to  help  the  drawing-room 
talk  before  dinner — sometimes  because  the  painter  is  fashion- 
able— occasionally  because  he  is  poor — not  unfrequently  that 
we  may  have  a collection  of  specimens  of  painting,  as  we  have 
specimens  of  minerals  or  butterflies — and  in  the  best  and 
rarest  case  of  all,  because  we  have  realty,  as  we  call  it,  taken 
a fancy  to  the  picture  ; meaning  the  same  sort  of  fancy  which 


424 


INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  AT  THE 


one  would  take  to  a pretty  arm-chair  or  a newly  shaped 
decanter.  But  as  for  real  love  of  the  picture,  and  joy  of  it 
when  we  have  got  it,  I do  not  believe  it  is  felt  by  one  in  a 
thousand. 

I am  afraid  this  apathy  of  ours  will  not  be  easily  con- 
quered ; but  even  supposing  it  should,  and  that  we  should 
begin  to  enjoy  pictures  property,  and  that  the  supply  of  good 
ones  increased  as  in  that  case  it  would  increase — then  comes 
another  question.  Perhaps  some  of  my  hearers  this  evening 
may  occasionally  have  heard  it  stated  of  me  that  I am  rather 
apt  to  contradict  myself.  I hope  I am  exceedingly  apt  to  do 
so.  I never  met  with  a question  yet,  of  any  importance, 
which  did  not  need,  for  the  right  solution  of  it,  at  least  one 
positive  and  one  negative  answer,  like  an  equation  of  the  second 
degree.  Mostly,  matters  of  any  consequence  are  three-sided, 
or  four-sided,  or  polygonal ; and  the  trotting  round  a polygon  is 
severe  work  for  people  any  way  stiff  in  their  opinions.  For 
myself,  I am  never  satisfied  that  I have  handled  a subject  prop- 
erty till  I have  contradicted  myself  at  least  three  times  : but 
once  must  do  for  this  evening.  I have  just  said  that  there  is 
no  chance  of  our  getting  good  Art  unless  we  delight  in  it : 
next  I say,  and  just  as  positively,  that  there  is  no  chance  of 
our  getting  good  Art  unless  we  resist  our  delight  in  it.  We 
must  love  it  first,  and  restrain  our  love  for  it  afterwards. 

This  sounds  strange  ; and  yet  I assure  you  it  is  true.  In 
fact,  whenever  anything  does  not  sound  strange,  you  may  gen- 
erally doubt  its  being  true  ; for  all  truth  is  wonderful.  But 
take  an  instance  in  physical  matters,  of  the  same  kind  of  con- 
tradiction. Suppose  you  were  explaining  to  a young  student 
in  astronomy  how  the  earth  was  kept  steady  in  its  orbit ; you 
would  have  to  state  to  him — would  you  not  ? — that  the  earth 
always  had  a tendency  to  fall  to  the  sun  ; and  that  also  it 
always  had  a tendency  to  fly  away  from  the  sun.  These  are 
two  precisely  contrary  statements  for  him  to  digest  at  his 
leisure,  before  he  can  understand  how  the  earth  moves.  Now, 
in  like  manner,  when  Art  is  set  in  its  true  and  serviceable 
course,  it  moves  under  the  luminous  attraction  of  pleasure  on 
the  one  side,  and  with  a stout  moral  purpose  of  going  about 


CAMBRIDGE  SCHOOL  OF  ART. 


425 


some  useful  business  on  the  other.  If  the  artist  works  with- 
out delight,  he  passes  away  into  space,  and  perishes  of  cold  : 
if  he  works  only  for  delight,  he  falls  into  the  sun,  and  extin- 
guishes himself  in  ashes.  On  the  whole,  this  last  is  the  fate, 
I do  not  say  the  most  to  be  feared,  but  which  Art  has  gener- 
ally hitherto  suffered,  and  which  the  great  nations  of  the  earth 
have  suffered  with  it. 

For,  while  most  distinctly  you  may  perceive  in  past  history 
that  Art  has  never  been  produced,  except  by  nations  who 
took  pleasure  in  it,  just  as  assuredly,  and  even  more  plainly, 
you  may  perceive  that  Art  has  always  destroyed  the  power 
and  life  of  those  who  pursued  it  for  pleasure  only.  Surely 
this  fact  must  have  struck  you  as  you  glanced  at  the  career  of 
the  great  nations  of  the  earth  : surely  it  must  have  occurred 
to  you  as  a point  for  serious  questioning,  how  far,  even  in  our 
days,  we  were  wise  in  promoting  the  advancement  of  pleas- 
ures which  appeared  as  yet  only  to  have  corrupted  the  souls 
and  numbed  the  strength  of  those  who  attained  to  them.  I 
have  been  complaining  of  England  that  she  despises  the  Arts  ; 
but  I might,  with  still  more  appearance  of  justice,  complain 
that  she  does  not  rather  dread  them  than  despise.  For,  what 
has  been  the  source  of  the  ruin  of  nations  since  the  world  be- 
gan ? Has  it  been  plague,  or  famine,  earthquake-shock  or 
volcano-flame  ? Non^gr  these  ever  prevailed  against  a great 
people,  so  as  to  make  their  name  pass  from  the  earth.  In 
every  period  and  place  of  national  decline,  you  will  find  other 
causes  than  these  at  work  to  bring  it  about,  namely,  luxury, 
effeminacy,  love  of  pleasure,  fineness  in  Art,  ingenuity  in  en- 
joyment. What  is  the  main  lesson  which,  as  far  as  we  seek 
any  in  our  classical  reading,  we  gather  for  our  youth  from 
ancient  history?  Surely  this — that  simplicity  of  life,  of  lan- 
guage, and  of  manners  gives  strength  to  a nation  ; and  that 
luxuriousness  of  life,  subtlety  of  language,  and  smoothness  of 
manners  bring  weakness  and  destruction  on  a nation.  While 
men  possess  little  and  desire  less,  they  remain  brave  and  no- 
ble : while  they  are  scornful  of  all  the  arts  of  luxury,  and  are 
in  the  sight  of  other  nations  as  barbarians,  their  swords  are 
irresistible  and  their  sway  illimitable  : but  let  them  become 


426 


INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  AT  THE 


sensitive  to  the  refinements  of  taste,  and  quick  in  the  capac- 
ities of  pleasure,  and  that  instant  the  fingers  that  had  grasped 
the  iron  rod,  fail  from  the  golden  sceptre.  You  cannot  charge 
me  with  any  exaggeration  in  this  matter  ; it  is  impossible  to 
state  the  truth  too  strongly,  or  as  too  universal.  For  ever  you 
will  see  the  rude  and  simple  nation  at  once  more  virtuous  and 
more  victorious  than  one  practised  in  the  arts.  Watch  how 
the  Lydian  is  overthrown  by  the  Persian  ; the  Persian  by  the 
Athenian  : the  Athenian  by  the  Spartan  ; then  the  whole  of 
polished  Greece  by  the  rougher  Roman ; the  Roman,  in  his 
turn  refined,  only  to  be  crushed  by  the  Goth  : and  at  the 
turning  point  of  the  middle  ages,  the  liberty  of  Europe  first 
asserted,  the  virtues  of  Christianity  best  practised,  and  its 
doctrines  best  attested,  by  a handful  of  mountain  shepherds, 
without  art,  without  literature,  almost  without  a language, 
yet  remaining  unconquered  in  the  midst  of  the  Teutonic 
chivalry,  and  uncorrupted  amidst  the  hierarchies  of  Rome.* 

I was  strangely  struck  by  this  great  fact  during  the  course 
of  a journey  last  summer  among  the  northern  vales  of  Switzer- 
land. My  mind  had  been  turned  to  the  subject  of  the  ulti- 
mate effects  of  Art  on  national  mind  before  I left  England, 
and  I went  straight  to  the  chief  fields  of  Swiss  history  : first 
to  the  centre  of  her  feudal  power,  Hapsburg,  the  hawk’s  nest 
from  which  the  Swiss  Rodolph  rose  to  found  the  Austrian 
empire  ; and  then  to  the  heart  of  her  republicanism,  that  little 
glen  of  Morgarten,  where  first  in  the  history  of  Europe  the 
shepherd’s  staff  prevailed  over  the  soldier’s  spear.  And  it 
was  somewhat  depressing  to  me  to  find,  as  day  bys  day  I found 
more  certainly,  that  this  people  which  first  asserted  the  liber- 
ties of  Europe,  and  first  conceived  the  idea  of  equitable  laws, 
was  in  all  the — shall  I call  them  the  slighter,  or  the  higher  ? — 

* I ought  perhaps  to  remind  the  reader  that  this  statement  refers  to 
two  different  societies  among  the  Alps  ; the  Waldenses  in  the  13th,  and 
the  people  of  the  Forest  Cantons  in  the  14th  and  following  centuries. 
Protestants  are  perhaps  apt  sometimes  to  forget  that  the  virtues  of  these 
mountaineers  were  shown  in  connection  with  vital  forms  of  opposing 
religions;  and  that  the  patriots  of  Schwytz  and  Uri  were  as  zealous 
Boman  Catholics  as  they  were  good  soldiers.  We  have  to  lay  to  their 
charge  the  death  of  Zuinglius  as  well  as  of  Gessler, 


CAMBRIDGE  SCHOOL  OF  ART \ 


427 


sensibilities  of  the  human  mind,  utterly  deficient ; and  not 
only  had  remained  from  its  earliest  ages  till  now,  without 
poetry,  without  Art,  and  without  music,  except  a mere  modu- 
lated cry  ; but,  as  far  as  I could  judge  from  the  rude  efforts 
of  their  early  monuments,  would  have  been,  at  the  time  of 
their  greatest  national  probity  and  power,  incapable  of  pro- 
ducing good  poetry  or  Art  under  any  circumstances  of  educa- 
tion. 

I say,  this  was  a sad  thing  for  me  to  find.  And  then,  to 
mend  the  matter,  I went  straight  over  into  Italy,  and  came  at 
once  upon  a curious  instance  of  the  patronage  of  Art,  of  the 
character  that  usually  inclines  most  to  such  patronage,  and  of 
the  consequences  thereof. 

From  Morgarten  and  Grutli,  I intended  to  have  crossed  to 
the  Yaudois  Valleys,  to  examine  the  shepherd  character  there  ; 
but  on  the  way  I had  to  pass  through  Turin,  where  unexpectedly 
I found  the  Paul  Veroneses,  one  of  which,  as  I told  you  just 
now,  stayed  me  at  once  for  six  weeks.  Naturally  enough,  one 
asked  how  these  beautiful  Veroneses  came  there  : and  found 
they  had  been  commissioned  by  Cardinal  Maurice  of  Savoy. 
Worthy  Cardinal,  1 thought : that’s  what  Cardinals  were  made 
for.  However,  goihgii  little  farther  in  the  gallery,  one  comes 
upon  four  very  graceful  pictures  by  Albani— these  also  com- 
missioned by  the  Cardinal,  and  commissioned  with  special 
directions,  according  to  the  Cardinal’s  fancy,  Four  pictures, 
to  be  illustrative  of  the  four  elements. 

One  of  the  most  curious  things  in  the  mind  of  the  people 
of  that  century  is  their  delight  in  these  four  elements,  and  in 
the  four  seasons.  They  had  hardly  any  other  idea  of  decorat- 
ing a room,  or  of  choosing  a subject  for  a picture,  than  by 
some  renewed  reference  to  fire  and  water,  or  summer  and 
winter  ; nor  were  ever  tired  of  hearing  that  summer  came 
after  spring,  and  that  air  was  not  earth,  until  these  interesting- 
pieces  of  information  got  finally  and  poetically  expressed  iii 
that  well-known  piece  of  elegant  English  conversation  about 
the  weather,  Thomson’s  “ Seasons.”  So  the  Cardinal,  not  ap- 
pearing to  have  any  better  idea  than  the  popular  one,  orders 
the  four  elements  ; but  thinking  that  the  elements  pure  would 


428 


INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  AT  THE 


be  slightly  dull,  lie  orders  them,  in  one  way  or  another,  to  be 
mixed  up  with  Cupids  ; to  have,  in  his  own  words,  “ una  co- 
piosa  quantita  di  Amorim.”  Albani  supplied  the  Cardinal  ac- 
cordingly with  Cupids  in  clusters  ; they  hang  in  the  sky  like 
bunches  of  cherries  ; and  leap  out  of  the  sea  like  flying  fish  ; 
grow  out  of  the  earth  in  fairy  rings  ; and  explode  out  the  fire 
like  squibs.  No  work  whatsoever  is  done  in  any  of  the  four 
elements,  but  by  the  Cardinal’s  Cupids.  They  are  ploughing 
the  earth  with  their  arrows  ; fishing  in  the  sea  with  their  bow- 
strings ; driving  the  clouds  with  their  breath  ; and  fanning 
the  fire  with  their  wings.  A few  beautiful  nymphs  are  assist- 
ing them  here  and  there  in  pearl-fishing,  flower-gathering,  and 
other  such  branches  of  graceful  industry  ; the  moral  of  the 
whole  being,  that  the  sea  was  made  for  its  pearls,  the  earth 
for  its  flowers,  and  all  the  world  for  pleasure. 

Well,  the  Cardinal,  this  great  encourager  of  the  arts,  having 
these  industrial  and  social  theories,  carried  them  out  in  prac- 
tice, as  you  may  perhaps  remember,  by  obtaining  a dispensa- 
tion from  the  Pope  to  marry  his  own  niece,  and  building  a 
villa  for  her  on  one  of  the  slopes  of  the  pretty  hills  which  rise 
to  the  east  of  the  city.  The  villa  which  he  built  is  now  one  of 
the  principal  objects  of  interest  to  the  traveller  as  an  example 
of  Italian  domestic  architecture  : to  me,  during  my  stay  in  the 
city,  it  was  much  more  than  an  object  of  interest ; for  its  de- 
serted gardens  were  by  much  the  pleasantest  place  I could 
find  for  walking  of  thinking  in,  in  the  hot  summer  afternoons. 

I say  thinking,  for  these  gardens  often  gave  me  a good  deal 
to  think  about.  They  are,  as  I told  you,  on  the  slope  of  the 
hill  above  the  city,  to  the  east ; commanding,  therefore,  the 
view  over  it  and  beyond  it,  westward — a view  which,  perhaps, 
of  all  those  that  can  be  obtained  north  of  the  Apennines,  gives 
the  most  comprehensive  idea  of  the  nature  of  Italy,  considered 
as  one  great  country.  If  you  glance  at  the  map,  you  will  ob- 
serve that  Turin  is  placed  in  the  centre  of  the  crescent  which 
the  Alps  form  round  the  basin  of  Piedmont ; it  is  within  ten 
miles  of  the  foot  of  the  mountains  at  the  nearest  point ; and 
from  that  point  the  chain  extends  half  round  the  city  in  one 
unbroken  Moorish  crescent,  forming  three-fourths  of  a circle 


CAMBRIDGE  SCHOOL  OF  ART. 


429 


from  the  Col  de  Tende  to  the  St.  Gothard  ; that  is  to  say,  just 
two  hundred  miles  of  Alps,  as  the  bird  flies.  I don’t  speak 
rhetorically  or  carelessly  ; I speak  as  I ought  to  speak  here — 
with  mathematical  precision.  Take  the  scale  on  your  map  ; 
measure  fifty  miles  of  it  accurately  ; try  that  measure  from  the 
Col  de  Tende  to  the  St.  Gothard,  and  you  will  find  that  four 
chords  of  fifty  miles  will  not  quite  reach  to  the  two  extremi- 
ties of  the  curve. 

You  see,  then,  from  this  spot,  the  plain  of  Piedmont,  on  the 
north  and  south,  literally  as  far  as  the  eye  can  reach  ; so  that 
the  plain  terminates  as  the  sea  does,  with  a level  blue  line, 
only  tufted  with  woods  instead  of  waves,  and  crowded  with 
towers  of  cities  instead  of  ships.  Then,  in  the  luminous  air 
beyond  and  behind  this  blue  horizon-line,  stand,  as  it  were, 
the  shadows  of  mountains,  they  themselves  dark,  for  the  south- 
ern slopes  of  the  Alps  of  the  Lago  Maggiore  and  Bellinzona 
are  all  without  snow  ; but  the  light  of  the  unseen  snowfields, 
lying  level  behind  the  visible  peaks,  is  sent  up  with  strange 
reflection  upon  the  clouds  ; an  everlasting  light  of  calm  Aurora 
in  the  north.  Then,  higher  and  higher  around  the  approach- 
ing darkness  of  the  plain,  rise  the  central  chains,  not  as  on 
the  Switzer’s  side,  a recognizable  group  and  following  of  suc- 
cessive and  separate  hills,  but  a wilderness  of  jagged  peaks, 
cast  in  passionate  and  fierce  profusion  along  the  circumference 
of  heaven  : precipice  behind  precipice,  and  gulf  beyond  gulf, 
filled  with  the  flaming  of  the  sunset,  and  forming  mighty 
channels  for  the  flowings  of  the  clouds,  which  roll  up  against 
them  out  of  the  vast  Italian  plain,  forced  together  by  the  nar- 
rowing crescent,  and  breaking  up  at  last  against  the  Alpine 
wall  in  towers  of  spectral  spray  ; or  sweeping  up  its  ravines 
with  long  moans  of  complaining  thunder.  Out  from  between 
the  cloudy  pillars,  as  they  pass,  emerge  for  ever  the  great  bah 
tlements  of  the  memorable  and  perpetual  hills  : Yiso,  with  her 
shepherd-witnesses  to  ancient  faith  ; Rocca-Melone,  the  high- 
est place  of  Alpine  pilgrimage  ; * Iseran,  who  shed  her  burial 

* The  summit  of  Rocca-Melone  is  the  sharp  peak  seen  from  Turin  on 
the  right  hand  of  the  gorge  of  the  Cenis,  dominant  over  the  low  pro- 
jecting pyramid  of  the  hill  called  by  De  Saussure  Montague  de  Musinet. 


430 


INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  AT  THE 


sheets  of  snow  about  the  march  of  Hannibal ; Cenis,  who  shone 
with  her  glacier  light  on  the  descent  of  Charlemagne  ; Para- 
diso,  who  watched  with  her  opposite  crest  the  stoop  of  the 
French  eagle  to  Marengo  ; and  underneath  all  these,  lying  in 
her  soft  languor,  this  tender  Italy,  lapped  in  dews  of  sleep,  or 
more  than  sleep — one  knows  not  if  it  is  trance,  from  which 
morning  shall  yet  roll  the  blinding  mists  away,  or  if  the  fair 
shadows  of  her  quietude  are  indeed  the  shades  of  purple 
death.  And,  lifted  a little  above  this  solemn  plain,  and  look- 
ing beyond  it  to  its  snowy  ramparts,  vainly  guardian,  stands 
this  palace  dedicate  to  pleasure,  the  whole  legend  of  Italy’s 
past  history  written  before  it  by  the  finger  of  God,  written  as 
with  an  iron  pen  upon  the  rock  forever,  on  all  those  fronting 
walls  of  reproachful  Alp  ; blazoned  in  gold  of  lightning  upon 
the  clouds  that  still  open  and  close  their  unsealed  scrolls  in 
heaven  ; painted  in  purple  and  scarlet  upon  the  mighty  mis- 
sal pages  of  sunset  after  sunset,  spread  vainly  before  a nation’s 
eyes  for  a nation’s  prayer.  So  stands  this  palace  of  pleasure  ; 
desolate  as  it  deserves — desolate  in  smooth  corridor  and 
glittering  chamber — desolate  in  pleached  walk  and  planted 
bower — desolate  in  that  worst  and  bitterest  abandonment 
which  leaves  no  light  of  memory.  No  ruins  are  here  of  walls 
rent  by  war,  and  falling  above  their  defenders  into  mounds 
of  graves  : no  remnants  are  here  of  chapel-altar,  or  temple- 
porch,  left  shattered  or  silent  by  the  power  of  some  purer 
worship  : no  vestiges  are  here  of  sacred  hearth  and  sweet 
homestead,  left  lonely  through  vicissitudes  of  fate,  and  heaven- 
sent sorrow.  Nothing  is  here  but  the  vain  apparellings  of 

Rocca-Melone  rises  to  a height  of  11,000  feet  above  the  sea,  and  its  peak 
is  a place  of  pilgrimage  to  this  day,  though  it  seems  temporarily  to  have 
ceased  to  be  so  in  the  time  of  De  Saussure,  who  thus  speaks  of  it: 

“ II  y a eu  pendant  long-terns  sur  cette  cime,  une  petite  chapelle  avec 
une  image  de  Notre  Dame  qui  etoit  en  grande  veneration  dansle  pays, 
et  oh  nn  grand  n ombre  de  gens  alloient  au  mois  d’aouten  procession,  de 
Suze  et  des  environs  ; mais  le  sentier  qni  conduit  a cette  chapelle  est  si 
ctroit  et  si  scabreux  qu’il  n’y  avoit  presque  pas  d’annees  qu’il  n’y  perit 
du  monde  ; la  fatigue  et  la  rarete  de  Pair  saisissoient  cenx  qui  avoient 
plutdt  consulte  leur  devotion  que  leurs  forces : ils  tomberent  en  de- 
laillance,  et  de  la  dans  le  precipice.  ” 


CAMBRIDGE  SCHOOL  OF  ART. 


431 


pride  sunk  into  dishonour,  and  vain  appanages  of  delight 
now  no  more  delightsome.  The  hill-waters,  that  once  flowed 
and  plashed  in  the  garden  fountains,  now  trickle  sadly 
through  the  weeds  that  encumber  their  basins,  with  a sound 
as  of  tears : the  creeping,  insidious,  neglected  flowers  weave 
their  burning  nets  about  the  white  marble  of  the  balustrades, 
and  rend  them  slowly,  block  from  block,  and  stone  from 
stone : the  thin,  sweet-scented  leaves  tremble  along  the  old 
masonry  joints  as  if  with  palsy  at  every  breeze  ; and  the  dark 
lichens,  golden  and  grey,  make  -the  foot-fall  silent  in  the  path’s 
centre. 

And  day  by  day  as  I walked  there,  the  same  sentence  seemed 
whispered  by  every  shaking  leaf,  and  every  dying  echo,  of 
garden  and  chamber. 

“Thus  end  all  the  arts  of  life,  only  in  death;  and  thus 
issue  all  the  gifts  of  man,  only  in  his  dishonour,  when  they 
are  pursued  or  possessed  in  the  service  of  pleasure  only.” 

This  then  is  the  great  enigma  of  Art  History, — you  must 
not  follow  Art  without  pleasure,  nor  must  you  follow  it  for  the 
sake  of  pleasure.  And  the  solution  of  that  enigma,  is  simply 
this  fact ; that  wherever  Art  has  been  followed  only  for  the 
sake  of  luxury  or  delight,  it  has  contributed,  and  largely  con- 
tributed, to  bring  about  the  destruction  of  the  nation  practis- 
ing it : but  wherever  Art  has  been  used  also  to  teach  any  truth, 
or  supposed  truth — religious,  moral,  or  natural — there  it  has 
elevated  the  nation  practising  it,  and  itself  with  the  nation. 

Thus  the  Art  of  Greece  rose,  and  did  service  to  the  people, 
so  long  as  it  was  to  them  the  earnest  interpreter  of  a religion 
they  believed  in  : the  Arts  of  northern  sculpture  and  architect- 
ure rose,  as  interpreters  of  Christian  legend  and  doctrine : 
the  Art  of  painting  in  Italy,  not  only  as  religious,  but  also 
mainly  as  expressive  of  truths  of  moral  philosophy,  and  pow- 
erful in  pure  human  portraiture.  The  only  great  painters  in 
our  schools  of  painting  in  England  have  either  been  of  portrait 
— Reynolds  and  Gainsborough  ; of  the  philosophy  of  social 
life — Hogarth  ; or  of  the  facts  of  nature  in  landscape— -Wilson 
and  Turner.  In  all  these  cases,  if  I had  time,  I could  shov/ 
you  that  the  success  of  the  painter  .depended  on  his  desire  to 


432 


INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  AT  THE 


convey  a truth,  rather  than  to  produce  a merely  beautiful 
picture ; that  is  to  say,  to  get  a likeness  of  a man,  or  of  a 
place  ; to  get  some  moral  principle  rightly  stated,  or  some 
historical  character  rightly  described,  rather  than  merely  to 
give  pleasure  to  the  eyes.  Compare  the  feeling  with  which  a 
Moorish  architect  decorated  an  arch  of  the  Alhambra,  with  that 
of  Hogarth  painting  the  “Marriage  a la  Mode,”  or  of  Wilkie 
painting  the  “ Chelsea  Pensioners,”  and  you  will  at  once  feel 
the  difference  between  Art  pursued  for  pleasure  only,  and 
for  the  sake  of  some  useful  principle  or  impression. 

But  what  you  might  not  so  easily  discern  is,  that  even  when 
painting  does  appear  to  have  been  pursued  for  pleasure  only, 
if  ever  you  find  it  rise  to  any  noble  level,  you  will  also  find 
that  a stern  search  after  truth  has  been  at  the  root  of  its  no- 
bleness. You  may  fancy,  perhaps,  that  Titian,  Veronese,  and 
Tintoret  were  painters  for  the  sake  of  pleasure  only  : but  in 
reality  they  were  the  only  painters  who  ever  sought  entirely 
to  master,  and  who  did  entirely  master,  the  truths  of  light 
and  shade  as  associated  with  colour,  in  the  noblest  of  all 
physical  created  things,  the  human  form.  They  were  the 
only  men  who  ever  painted  the  human  body  ; all  other  paint- 
ers of  the  great  schools  are  mere  anatomical  draughtsmen  com- 
pared to  them  ; rather  makers  of  maps  of  the  body,  than 
painters  of  it.  The  Venetians  alone,  by  a toil  almost  super- 
human, succeeded  at  last  in  obtaining  a power  almost  super- 
human ; and  were  able  finally  to  paint  the  highest  visible  work 
of  God  with  unexaggerated  structure,  undegraded  colour,  and 
unaffected  gesture.  It  seems  little  to  say  this  ; but  I assure 
you  it  is  much  to  have  done  this — so  much,  that  no  other  men 
but  the  Venetians  ever  did  it:  none  of  them  ever  painted  the 
human  body  without  in  some  degree  caricaturing  the  anatomy, 
forcing  the  action,  or  degrading  the  hue. 

Now,  therefore,  the  sum  of  all  is,  that  you  who  wish  to  en- 
courage Art  in  England  have  to  do  two  things  with  it : you 
must  delight  in  it,  in  the  first  place  ; and  you  must  get  it  to 
serve  some  serious  work,  in  the  second  place.  I don’t  mean 
by  serious,  necessarily  moral  ; all  that  I mean  by  serious  is  in 
some  way  or  other  useful,  not  merely  selfish,  careless,  or  in- 


CAMBRIDGE  SCHOOL  OF  ART. 


433 


clolent.  I had,  indeed,  intended  before  closing  my  address, 
to  have  traced  out  a few  of  the  directions  in  which,  as  it 
seems  to  me,  Art  may  be  seriously  and  practically  serviceable 
to  us  in  the  career  of  civilization.  I had  hoped  to  show  you 
how  many  of  the  great  phenomena  of  nature  still  remained 
unrecorded  by  it,  for  us  to  record  ; how  many  of  the  historical 
monuments  of  Europe  were  perishing  without  memorial,  for 
the  want  of  a little  honest,  simple,  laborious,  loving  draughts- 
manship ; how  many  of  the  most  impressive  historical  events 
of  the  day  failed  of  teaching  us  half  of  what  they  were  meant 
to  teach,  for  want  of  painters  to  represent  them  faithfully,  in- 
stead of  fancifully,  and  with  historical  truth  for  their  aim, 
instead  of  national  self-glorification.  I had  hoped  to  show 
you  how  many-ef.  the  best  impulses  of  the  heart  were  lost  in 
frivolity  or  sensuality,  for  want  of  purer  beauty  to  contem- 
plate, and  of  noble  thoughts  to  associate  with  the  fervour  of 
hallowed  human  passion  ; how,  finally,  a great  part  of  the 
vital  power  of  our  religious  faith  was  lost  in  us,  for  want  of 
such  art  as  would  realise  in  some  rational,  probable,  believ- 
able way,  those  events  of  sacred  history  which,  as  they  visibly 
and  intelligibly  occurred,  may  also  be  visibly  and  intelligibly 
represented.  But  all  this  I dare  not  do  yet.  I felt,  as  I 
thought  over  these  things,  that  the  time  was  not  yet  come  for 
their  declaration  : the  time  will  come  for  it,  and  I believe 
soon  ; but  as  yet,  the  man  would  only  lay  himself  open  to  the 
charge  of  vanity,  of  imagination,  and  of  idle  fondness  of  hope, 
who  should  venture  to  trace  in  words  the  course  of  the  higher 
blessings  which  the  Arts  may  have  yet  in  store  for  mankind. 
As  yet  there  is  no  need  to  do  so : all  that  we  have  to  plead 
for  is  an  earnest  and  straightforward  exertion  in  those 
courses  of  study  which  are  opened  to  us  day  by  day,  believ- 
ing only  that  they  are  to  be  followed  gravely  and  for  grave 
purposes,  as  by  men,  and  not  by  children.  I appeal,  finally, 
to  all  those  who  are  to  become  the  pupils  of  these  schools,  to 
keep  clear  of  the  notion  of  following  Art  as  dilettantism : 
it  ought  to  delight  you,  as  your  reading  delights  you — but  you 
never  think  of  your  reading  as  dilettantism.  It  ought  to  de- 
light you  as  your  studies  of  physical-science  delight  you — but 


434 


INAUGURAL  ADDRESS  AT  THE 


you  don’t  call  physical  science  dilettantism.  If  you  are  deter- 
mined only  to  think  of  Art  as  a play  or  a pleasure,  give  it  up 
at  once : you  will  do  no  good  to  yourselves,  and  you  will  de- 
grade the  pursuit  in  the  sight  of  others.  Better,  infinitely 
better,  that  you  should  never  enter  a picture  gallery,  than 
that  you  should  enter  only  to  saunter  and  to  smile : better, 
infinitely  better,  that  you  should  never  handle  a pencil  at  all, 
than  handle  it  only  for  the  sake  of  complacency  in  your 
small  dexterity : better,  infinitely  better,  that  you  should  be 
wholly  uninterested  in  pictures,  and  uninformed  respecting 
them,  than  that  you  should  just  know  enough  to  detect  blem- 
ishes in  great  works, — to  give  a colour  of  reasonableness  to 
presumption,  and  an  appearance  of  acuteness  to  misunder- 
standing. Above  all,  I would  plead  for  this  so  far  as  the 
teaching  of  these  schools  may  be  addressed  to  the  junior 
Members  of  the  University.  Men  employed  in  any  kind  of 
manual  labour,  by  which  they  must  live,  are  not  likely  to  take 
up  the  notion  that  they  can  learn  any  other  art  for  amuse- 
ment only  ; but  amateurs  are  : and  it  is  of  the  highest  im- 
portance, najr,  it  is  just  the  one  thing  of  all  importance,  to 
show  them  what  drawing  really  means  ; and  not  so  much  to 
teach  them  to  produce  a good  work  themselves,  as  to  know  it 
when  they  see  it  done  by  others.  Good  work,  in  the  stern 
sense  of  the  word,  as  I before  said,  no  mere  amateur  can  do  ; 
and  good  work,  in  any  sense,  that  is  to  say,  profitable  work 
for  himself  or  for  any  one  else,  he  can  only  do  by  being 
made  in  the  beginning  to  see  what  is  possible  for  him,  and 
what  not ; — what  is  accessible,  and  what  not ; and  by  having 
the  majesty  and  sternness  of  the  everlasting  laws  of  fact  set 
before  him  in  their  infinitude.  It  is  no  matter  for  appalling 
him  : the  man  is  great  already  who  is  made  well  capable  of 
being  appalled  ; nor  do  we  ever  wisely  hope,  nor  truly  under- 
stand, till  we  are  humiliated  by  our  hope,  and  awestruck  by 
our  understanding.  Nay,  I will  go  farther  than  this,  and  say 
boldly,  that  what  you  may  have  mainly  to  teach  the  young 
men  here  is,  not  so  much  what  they  can  do,  as  what  they  can- 
not ; — to  make  them  see  how  much  there  is  in  nature  which 
cannot  be  imitated,  and  how  much  in  man  which  cannot  be 


CAMBRIDGE  SCHOOL  OF  ART \ 


435 


emulated.  He  only  can  be  truly  said  to  be  educated  in  Art  to 
whom  all  his  work  is  only  a feeble  sign  of  glories  which  he  can- 
not convey,  and  a feeble  means  of  measuring,  with  ever- 
enlarging  admiration,  the  great  and  untraversable  gulf  which 
God  has  set  between  the  great  and  the  common  intelligences 
of  mankind  : and  all  the  triumphs  of  Art  which  man  can 
commonly  achieve  are  only  truly  crowned  by  pure  delight  in 
natural  scenes  themselves,  and  by  the  sacred  and  self-forgetful 
veneration  which  can  be  nobly  abashed,  and  tremblingly  ex< 
alted,  in  the  presence  of  a human  spirit  greater  than  his  own* 


' 


' 

MODERN  PAINTERS 


VOLUME  THE  FIRST 

OF  GENERAL  PRINCIPLES  AND  OF  TRUT 


THE  LANDSCAPE 


Zo 

ARTISTS  OF  ENGLAND 

THIS  WORK 


IS  RESPECTFULLY  DEDICATED 
BY  THEIR  SINCERE  ADMIRER 

The  Author 


PREFACE  TO  THE  FIRST  EDITION 


The  work  now  laid  before  the  public  originated  in  in- 
dignation at  the  shallow  and  false  criticism  of  the  peri- 
odicals of  the  day  on  the  works  of  the  great  living  artist 
to  whom  it  principally  refers.  It  was  intended  to  be  a 
short  pamphlet,  reprobating  the  matter  and  style  of 
those  critiques,  and  pointing  out  their  perilous  ten- 
dency, as  guides  of  public  feeling.  But,  as  point  after 
point  presented  itself  for  demonstration,  I found  myself 
compelled  to  amplify  what  was  at  first  a letter  to  the 
Editor  of  a Xteview,  into  something  very  like  a treatise 
on  art,  to  which  I was  obliged  to  give  the  more  consist- 
ency and  completeness,  because  it  advocated  opinions 
which,  to  the  ordinary  connoisseur,  will  sound  heretical. 
I now  scarcely  know  whether  I should  announce  it  is  an 
Essay  on  Landscape  Painting,  and  apologize  for  its  fre- 
quent reference  to  the  works  of  a particular  master ; or, 
announcing  it  as  a critique  on  particular  works,  apologize 
for  its  lengthy  discussion  of  general  principles.  But  of 
whatever  character  the  work  may  be  considered,  the  mo- 
tives which  led  me  to  undertake  it  must  not  be  mis- 
taken. No  zeal  for  the  reputation  of  any  individual,  no 
personal  feeling  of  any  kind,  has  the  slightest  weight  or 
influence  with  me..  The  reputation  of  the  great  artist  to 
whose  works  I have  chiefly  referred,  is  established  on 
too  legitimate  grounds  among  all  whose  admiration  is 
honorable,  to  be  in  any  way  affected  by  the  ignorant  sar- 


6 


PREFACE  TO  TEE  FIRST  EDITION. 


casms  of  pretension  and  affectation.  But  when  public 
taste  seems  plunging  deeper  and  deeper  into  degrada- 
tion day  by  day,  and  when  the  press  universally  exerts 
such  power  as  it  possesses  to  direct  the  feeling  of  the 
nation  more  completely  to  all  that  is  theatrical,  affected, 
and  false  in  art ; while  it  vents  its  ribald  buffooneries  on 
the  most  exalted  truth,  and  the  highest  ideal  of  land- 
scape, that  this  or  any  other  age  has  ever  witnessed,  it 
becomes  the  imperative  duty  of  all  who  have  any  per- 
ception or  knowledge  of  what  is  really  great  in  art,  and 
any  desire  for  its  advancement  in  England,  to  come  fear- 
lessly forward,  regardless  of  such  individual  interests  as 
are  likely  to  be  injured  by  the  knowledge  of  what  is 
good  and  right,  to  declare  and  demonstrate,  wherever 
they  exist,  the  essence  and  the  authority  of  the  Beautiful 
and  the  True. 

Whatever  may  seem  invidious  or  partial  in  the  execu- 
tion of  my  task  is  dependent  not  so  much  on  the  tenor 
of  the  work,  as  on  its  incompleteness.  I have  not  en- 
tered into  systematic  criticism  of  all  the  painters  of 
the  present  day ; but  I have  illustrated  each  particular 
excellence  and  truth  of  art  by  the  works  in  which  it  ex- 
ists in  the  highest  degree,  resting  satisfied  that  if  it  be 
once  rightly  felt  and  enjoyed  in  these,  it  will  be  discov- 
ered and  appreciated  wherever  it  exists  in  others.  And 
although  I have  never  suppressed  any  conviction  of  the 
superiority  of  one  artist  over  another,  which  I believed 
to  be  grounded  on  truth,  and  necessary  to  the  under- 
standing of  truth,  I have  been  cautious  never  to  under- 
mine positive  rank,  while  I disputed  relative  rank.  My 
uniform  desire  and  aim  have  been,  not  that  the  present 
favorite  should  be  admired  less,  but  that  the  neglected 
master  should  be  admired  more.  And  I know  that  an 
increased  perception  and  sense  of  truth  and  beauty, 
though  it  may  interfere  with  our  estimate  of  the  com- 
parative rank  of  painters,  will  invariably  tend  to  in- 


PREFACE  TO  THE  FIRST  EDITION . 


7 


crease  our  admiration  of  all  who  are  really  great ; and 
he  who  now  places  Stanfield  and  Callcott  above  Turner, 
will  admire  Stanfield  and  Callcott  more  than  he  does 
now,  when  he  has  learned  to  place  Turner  far  above 
them  both. 

In  three  instances  only  have  I spoken  in  direct  depre- 
ciation of  the  works  of  living  artists,  and  these  are  all 
cases  in  which  the  reputation  is  so  firm  and  extended, 
as  to  suffer  little  injury  from  the  opinion  of  an  individ- 
ual, and  where  the  blame  has  been  warranted  and  de- 
served by  the  desecration  of  the  highest  powers. 

Of  the  old  masters  I have  spoken  with  far  greater 
freedom ; but  let  it  be  remembered  that  only  a portion 
of  the  work  is  now  presented  to  the  public,  and  it  must 
not  be  supposed,  because  in  that  particular  portion,  and 
with  reference  to  particular  excellencies,  I have  spoken 
in  constant  depreciation,  that  I have  no  feeling  of  other 
excellencies  of  which  cognizance  can  only  be  taken  in 
future  parts  of  the  work.  Let  me  not  be  understood  to 
mean  more  than  I have  said,  nor  be  made  responsible 
for  conclusions^when  I have  only  stated  facts.  I have 
said  that  the  old  masters  did  not  give  the  truth  of  Nat- 
ure; if  the  reader  chooses,  thence,  to  infer  that  they 
were  not  masters  at  all,  it  is  his  conclusion,  not  mine. 

Whatever  I have  asserted  throughout  the  work,  I have 
endeavored  to  ground  altogether  on  demonstrations 
which  must  stand  or  fall  by  their  own  strength,  and 
which  ought  to  involve  no  more  reference  to  authority 
or  character  than  a demonstration  in  Euclid.  Yet  it  is 
proper  for  the  public  to  know,  that  the  writer  is  no 
mere  theorist,  but  has  been  devoted  from  his  youth  to 
the  laborious  study  of  practical  art. 

Whatever  has  been  generally  affirmed  of  the  old 
schools  of  landscape-painting  is  founded  on  familiar 
acquaintance  with  every  important  work  of  art,  from 
Antwerp  to  Naples.  But  it  would  be  useless,  where 


PREFACE  TO  THE  FIRST  EDITION. 


close  and  immediate  comparison  with  works  in  our  own 
Academy  is  desirable,  to  refer  to  the  details  of  pictures 
at  Eome  or  Munich;  and  it  would  be  impossible  to 
speak  at  once  with  just  feeling-,  as  regarded  the  pos- 
sessor, and  just  freedom,  as  regarded  the  public,  of  pict- 
ures in  private  galleries.  Whatever  particular  refer- 
ences have  been  made  for  illustration,  have  been  there- 
fore confined,  as  far  as  was  in  my  power,  to  works  in  the 
National  and  Dulwich  Galleries. 

Finally,  I have  to  apologize  for  the  imperfection  of  a 
work  which  I could  have  wished  not  to  have  executed, 
but  with  years  of  reflection  and  revisal.  It  is  owing  to 
my  sense  of  the  necessity  of  such  revisal,  that  only  a 
portion  of  the  work  is  now  presented  to  the  public ; but 
that  portion  is  both  complete  in  itself,  and  is  more  pe- 
culiarly directed  against  the  crying  evil  which  called 
for  instant  remedy.  Whether  I ever  completely  fulfil 
my  intention,  will  partly  depend  upon  the  spirit  in 
which  the  present  volume  is  received.  If  it  be  attrib- 
uted to  an  invidious  spirit,  or  a desire  for  the  advance- 
ment of  individual  interests,  I could  hope  to  effect  little 
good  by  farther  effort.  If,  on  the  contrary,  its  real  feel- 
ing and  intention  be  understood,  I shall  shrink  from  no 
labor  in  the  execution  of  a task  which  may  tend,  how- 
ever feebly,  to  the  advancement  of  the  cause  of  real  art 
in  England,  and  to  the  honor  of  those  great  living  Mas- 
ters whom  we  now  neglect  or  malign,  to  pour  our  flat- 
tery into  the  ear  of  Death,  and  exalt,  with  vain  acclama- 
tion, the  names  of  those  who  neither  demand  our  praise, 
nor  regard  our  gratitude. 


The  Author. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


It  is  allowed  by  the  most  able  writers  on  naval  and 
military  tactics,  that  although  the  attack  by  successive 
divisions  absolutely  requires  in  the  attacking  party  such 
an  inherent  superiority  in  quality  of  force,  and  such  con- 
sciousness of  that  superiority,  as  may  enable  his  front 
columns,  or  his  leading  ships,  to  support  themselves  for 
a considerable  period  against  overwhelming  numbers ; it 
yet  insures,  if  maintained  with  constancy,  the  most  total 
ruin  of  the  opposing  force.  Convinced  of  the  truth,  and 
therefore  assured  of  the  ultimate  prevalence  and  victory 
of  the  principles  which  I have  advocated,  and  equally 
confident  that  the  strength  of  the  cause  must  give  weight 
to  the  strokes  of  even  the  weakest  of  its  defenders,  I 
permitted  myself  to  yield  to  a somewhat  hasty  and  hot- 
headed desire  of  being,  at  whatever  risk,  in  the  thick  of 
the  fire,  and  began  the  contest  with  a part,  and  that  the 
weakest  and  least  considerable  part,  of  the  forces  at  my 
disposal.  And  I now  find  the  volume  thus  boldly  laid 
before  the  public  in  a position  much  resembling  that  of 
the  Royal  Sovereign  at  Trafalgar,  receiving,  unsup- 
ported, the  broadsides  of  half  the  enemy’s  fleet,  while 
unforeseen  circumstances  have  hitherto  prevented,  and 
must  yet  for  a time  prevent,  my  heavier  ships  of  the  line 
from  taking  any  part  in  the  action.  I watched  the  first 
moments  of  the  struggle  with  some  anxiety  for  the  soli- 
tary vessel. — an  anxiety  which  I have  now  ceased  to  feel, 


10 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION 


— for  the  flag  of  truth  waves  brightly  through  the  smoke 
of  the  battle,  and  my  antagonists,  wholly  intent  on  the 
destruction  of  the  leading  ship,  have  lost  their  position 
and  exposed  themselves  in  defenceless  disorder  to  the 
attack  of  the  following  columns. 

If,  however,  I have  had  no  reason  to  regret  my  hasty 
advance,  as  far  as  regards  the  ultimate  issue  of  the  strug- 
gle, I have  yet  found  it  to  occasion  much  misconception 
of  the  character,  and  some  diminution  of  the  influence, 
of  the  present  essay.  For  though  the  work  has  been  re- 
ceived as  only  in  sanguine  moments  I had  ventured  to 
hope,  though  I have  had  the  pleasure  of  knowing  that 
in  many  instances  its  principles  have  carried  with  them 
a strength  of  conviction  amounting  to  a demonstration 
of  their  truth,  and  that,  even  where  it  has  had  no  other 
influence,  it  has  excited  interest,  suggested  inquiry,  and 
prompted  to  a just  and  frank  comparison  of  Art  with 
Nature ; yet  this  effect  would  have  been  greater  still, 
had  net  the  work  been  supposed,  as  it  seems  to  have 
been  by  many  readers,  a completed  treatise,  containing  a 
systematized  statement  of  the  whole  of  my  views  on  the 
subject  of  modern  art.  Considered  as  such,  it  surprises 
me  that  the  book  should  have  received  the  slightest 
attention.  For  what  respect  could  be  due  to  a writer 
who  pretended  to  criticise  and  classify  the  works  of  the 
great  painters  of  landscape,  without  developing,  or  even 
alluding  to,  one  single  principle  of  the  beautiful  or  sub- 
lime % So  far  from  being  a completed  essay,  it  is  little 
more  than  the  introduction  to  the  mass  of  evidence  and 
illustration  which  I have  yet  to  bring  forward ; it  treats 
of  nothing  but  the  initiatory  steps  of  art,  states  nothing 
but  the  elementary  rules  of  criticism,  touches  only  on 
merits  attainable  by  accuracy  of  eye  and  fidelity  of  hand, 
and  leaves  for  future  consideration  every  one  of  the 
eclectic  qualities  of  pictures,  all  of  good  that  is  prompted 
by  feeling,  and  of  great  that  is  guided  by  judgment; 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


11 


and  its  function  and  scope  should  the  less  have  been 
mistaken,  because  I have  not  only  most  carefully  ar- 
ranged the  subject  in  its  commencement,  but  have  given 
frequent  references  throughout  to  the  essays  by  which 
it  is  intended  to  be  succeeded,  in  which  I shall  endeavor 
to  point  out  the  signification  and  the  value  of  those  phe- 
nomena  of  external  nature  which  I have  been  hitherto 
compelled  to  describe  without  reference  either  to  their 
inherent  beauty,  or  to  the  lessons  which  may  be  derived 
from  them. 

Yet,  to  prevent  such  misconception  in  future,  I may 
perhaps  be  excused  for  occupying  the  reader’s  time  with 
a fuller  statement  of  the  feelings  with  which  the  work 
was  undertaken,  of  its  general  plan,  and  of  the  conclu- 
sions and  positions  which  I hope  to  be  able  finally  to 
deduce  and  maintain. 

Nothing,  perhaps,  bears  on  the  face  of  it  more  appear- 
ance of  folly,  ignorance,  and  impertinence,  than  any  at- 
tempt to  diminish  the  honor  of  those  to  whom  the  assent 
of  many  generations  has  assigned  a throne  ; for  the  truly 
great  of  later  times  have,  almost  without  exception, 
fostered  in  others  the  veneration  of  departed  power 
which  they  felt  themselves,  satisfied  in  all  humility  to 
take  their  seat  at  the  feet  of  those  whose  honor  is  bright- 
ened by  the  hoariness  of  time,  and  to  wait  for  the  period 
when  the  lustre  of  many  departed  days  may  accumulate 
on  their  own  heads,  in  the  radiance  which  culminates 
as  it  recedes.  The  envious  and  incompetent  have  usu- 
ally been  the  leaders  of  attack,  content  if,  like  the  foul- 
ness of  the  earth,  they  may  attract  to  themselves  notice 
by  their  noisomeness,  or,  like  its  insects,  exalt  them- 
selves by  virulence  into  visibility.  While,  however,  the 
envy  of  the  vicious,  and  the  insolence  of  the  ignorant, 
are  occasionally  shown  in  their  nakedness  by  futile  efforts 
to  degrade  the  dead,  it  is  worthy  of  consideration  whether 
they  may  not  more  frequently  escape  detection  in  sue - 


12 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION . 


cessful  efforts  to  degrade  the  living, — whether  the  very 
same  malice  may  not  be  gratified,  the  very  same  incom- 
petence demonstrated  in  the  unjust  lowering  of  present 
greatness,  and  the  unjust  exaltation  of  a perished  power, 
as,  if  exerted  and  manifested  in  a less  safe  direction, 
would  have  classed  the  critic  with  Nero  and  Caligula, 
Avith  Zoilus  and  Perrault.  Be  it  remembered,  that  the 
spirit  of  detraction  is  detected  only  when  unsuccessful, 
and  receives  least  punishment  where  it  effects  the  great- 
est injury ; and  it  cannot  but  be  felt  that  there  is  as 
much  danger  that  the  rising  of  new  stars  should  be  con- 
cealed by  the  mists  which  are  unseen,  as  that  those 
throned  in  heaven  should  be  darkened  by  the  clouds 
which  are  visible. 

There  is,  I fear,  so  much  malice  in  the  hearts  of  most 
men,  that  they  are  chiefly  jealous  of  that  praise  which 
can  give  the  greatest  pleasure,  and  are  then  most  liberal 
of  eulogium  when  it  can  no  longer  be  enjoyed.  They 
grudge  not  the  whiteness  of  the  sepulchre,  because  by 
no  honor  they  can  bestow  upon  it  can  the  senseless 
corpse  be  rendered  an  object  of  envy ; but  they  are  nig- 
gardly of  the  reputation  which  contributes  to  happiness, 
or  advances  to  fortune.  They  are  glad  to  obtain  credit 
for  generosity  and  humility  by  exalting  those  who  are 
beyond  the  reach  of  praise,  and  thus  to  escape  the  more 
painful  necessity  of  doing  homage  to  a living  rival. 
They  are  rejoiced  to  set  up  a standard  of  imaginary  ex- 
cellence, which  may  enable  them,  by  insisting  on  the 
inferiority  of  a contemporary  work  to  the  things  that 
have  been,  to  withdraw  the  attention  from  its  superiority 
to  the  things  that  are.  The  same  undercurrent  of  jeal- 
ousy operates  in  our  reception  of  animadversion.  Men 
have  commonly  more  pleasure  in  the  criticism  which 
hurts  than  in  that  which  is  innocuous,  and  are  more  tol- 
erant of  the  severity  which  breaks  hearts  and  ruins  for- 
tunes, than  of  that  which  falls  impotently  on  the  grave. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION.  lo 

And  thus  well  says  the  good  and  deep -minded  Richard 
Hooker : “ To  the  best  and  wisest,  while  they  live,  the 
world  is  continually  a froward  opposite ; and  a curious 
observer  of  their  defects  and  imperfections,  their  virtues 
afterwards  it  as  much  admireth.  And  for  this  cause, 
many  times  that  which  deserveth  admiration  w7ould 
hardly  be  able  to  find  favor,  if  they  wrhich  propose  it 
were  not  content  to  profess  themselves  therein  scholars 
and  followers  of  the  ancient.  For  the  world  will  not 
endure  to  hear  that  we  are  wiser  than  any  have  been 
which  went  before.” — Book  v.  ch.  vii.  3.  He,  therefore, 
who  would  maintain  the  cause  of  contemporary  excel- 
lence against  that  of  elder  time,  must  have  almost  every 
class  of  men  arrayed  against  him.  The  generous,  be- 
cause they  would  not  find  matter  of  accusation  against 
established  dignities  ; the  envious,  because  they  like  not 
the  sound  of  a living  man’s  praise ; the  wise,  because 
they7  prefer  the  opinion  of  centuries  to  that  of  days ; and 
the  foolish,  because  they  are  incapable  of  forming  an 
opinion  of  their  own.  Obloquy  so  universal  is  not 
lightly  to  be  risked,  and  the  few  who  make  an  effort  to 
stem  the  torrent,  as  it  is  made  commonly  in  favor  of 
their  own  works,  deserve  the  contempt  which  is  their 
only  reward.  Nor  is  this  to  be  regretted,  in  its  influence 
on  the  progress  and  preservation  of  things  technical  and 
communicable.  Respect  for  the  ancients  is  the  salvation 
of  art,  though  it  sometimes  blinds  us  to  its  ends.  It  in- 
creases the  power  of  the  painter,  though  it  diminishes 
his  liberty ; and  if  it  be  sometimes  an  encumbrance  to 
the  essays  of  invention,  it  is  oftener  a protection  from 
the  consequences  of  audacity.  The  whole  system  and 
discipline  of  art,  the  collected  results  of  the  experience 
of  ages,  might,  but  for  the  fixed  authority  of  antiquity,  be 
swept  away  by  the  rage  of  fashion,  or  lost  in  the  glare  of 
novelty ; and  the  knowledge  which  it  had  taken  centuries 
to  accumulate,  the  principles  which  mighty  minds  had  ar- 


14 


PREFACE  TO  TIIE  SECOND  EDITION 


rived  at  only  in  dying1,  might  be  overthrown  by  the  fren- 
zy of  a faction,  and  abandoned  in  the  insolence  of  an  hour. 

Neither,  in  its  general  application,  is  the  persuasion 
of  the  superiority  of  former  works  less  just  than  useful. 
The  greater  number  of  them  are,  and  must  be,  immeas- 
urably nobler  than  any  of  the  results  of  present  effort, 
because  that  which  is  best  of  the  productions  of  four 
thousand  years  must  necessarily  be,  in  its  accumulation, 
beyond  all  rivalry  from  the  works  of  any  given  genera- 
tion ; but  it  should  always  be  remembered  that  it  is  im- 
probable that  many,  and  impossible  that  all,  of  such 
works,  though  the  greatest  yet  produced,  should  ap- 
proach abstract  perfection  ; that  there  is  certainly  some- 
thing left  for  us  to  carry  farther,  or  complete ; that  any 
given  generation  has  just  the  same  chance  of  producing 
some  individual  mind  of  first-rate  calibre,  as  any  of  its 
predecessors ; and  that  if  such  a mind  should  arise,  the 
chances  are,  that  with  the  assistance  of  experience  and 
example,  it  would,  in  its  particular  and  chosen  path,  do 
greater  things  than  had  been  before  done. 

We  must  therefore  be  cautious  not  to  lose  sight  of  the 
real  use  of  what  has  been  left  us  by  antiquity,  nor  to 
take  that  for  a model  of  perfection  which  is,  in  many 
cases,  only  a guide  to  it.  The  picture  which  is  looked  to 
for  an  interpretation  of  nature  is  invaluable,  but  the 
picture  which  is  taken  as  a substitute  for  nature,  had 
better  be  burned ; and  the  young  artist,  while  he  should 
shrink  with  horror  from  the  iconoclast  who  would  tear 
from  him  every  landmark  and  light  which  has  been  be- 
queathed him  by  the  ancients,  and  leave  him  in  a liber- 
ated childhood,  may  be  equally  certain  of  being  be- 
trayed by  those  who  would  give  him  the  power  and  the 
knowledge  of  past  time,  and  then  fetter  his  strength 
from  all  advance,  and  bend  his  eyes  backward  on  a beaten 
path — who  would  thrust  canvass  between  him  and  the 
sky,  and  tradition  between  him  and  God. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


15 


And  such  conventional  teaching  is  the  more  to  bo 
dreaded,  because  all  that  is  highest  in  art,  all  that  is  crea- 
tive and  imaginative,  is  formed  and  created  by  every 
great  master  for  himself,  and  cannot  be  repeated  or  imi- 
tated by  others.  We  judge  of  the  excellence  of  a rising 
writer,  not  so  much  by  the  resemblance  of  his  works  to 
what  has  been  done  before,  as  by  their  difference  from  it ; 
and  while  we  advise  him,  in  his  first  trials  of  strength,  to  set 
certain  models  before  him  with  respect  to  inferior  points, 
— one  for  versification,  another  for  arrangement,  another 
for  treatment, — we  yet  admit  not  his  greatness  until  he 
has  broken  away  from  all  his  models,  and  struck  forth 
versification,  arrangement,  and  treatment  of  his  own. 

Three  points,  therefore,  I would  especially  insist  upon 
as  necessary  to  be  kept  in  mind  in  all  criticism,  of  mod- 
ern art.  First,  that  there  are  few,  very  few  of  even  the 
best  productions  of  antiquity,  which  are  not  visibly  and 
palpably  imperfect  in  some  kind  or  way,  and  conceivably 
improvable  by  farther  study;  that  every  nation,  perhaps 
every  generation,  has  in  all  probability  some  peculiar 
gift,  some  particular  character  of  mind,  enabling  it  to  do 
something  different  from,  or  something  in  some  sort 
better  than  what  has  been  before  done  ; and  that  there- 
fore, unless  art  be  a trick,  or  a manufacture,  of  which  the 
secrets  are  lost,  the  greatest  minds  of.  existing  nations, 
if  exerted  with  the  same  industry,  passion,  and  honest 
aim  as  those  of  past  time,  have  a chance  in  their  partic- 
ular walk  of  doing  something  as  great,  or,  taking  the 
advantage  of  former  example  into  account,  even  greater 
and  better.  It  is  difficult  to  conceive  by  what  laws  of 
logic  some  of  the  reviewers  of  the  following  Essay  have 
construed  its  first  sentence  into  a denial  of  this  prin- 
ciple,— a denial  such  as  their  own  conventional  and 
shallow  criticism  of  modern  works  invariably  implies.  I 
have  said  that  “ nothing  has  been  for  centuries  conse- 
crated by  public  admiration  without  possessing  in  a 


16 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


high  degree  some  species  of  sterling  excellence.”  Does 
it  thence  follow  that  it  possesses  in  the  highest  degree 
every  species  of  sterling  excellence  * “ Yet  thus,”  says 

the  sapient  reviewer,  “ he  admits  the  fact  against  which 
he  mainly  argues, — namely,  the  superiority  of  these  time- 
honored  productions.”  As  if  the  possession  of  an  ab- 
stract excellence  of  some  kind  necessarily  implied  the 
possession  of  an  incomparable  excellence  of  every  kind! 
There  are  few  works  of  man  so  perfect  as  to  admit  of  no 
conception  of  their  being  excelled,* — there  are  thousands 
which  have  been  for  centuries,  and  will  be  for  centuries 
more,  consecrated  by  public  admiration,  which  are  yet 
imperfect  in  many  respects,  and  have  been  excelled, 
and  may  be  excelled  again.  Do  my  opponents  mean  to 
assert  that  nothing  good  can  ever  be  bettered,  and  that 
what  is  best  of  past  time  is  necessarily  best  of  all  time  ? 
Perugino,  I suppose,  |Dossessed  some  species  of  sterling 
excellence,  but  Perugino  was  excelled  by  Paffaelle  ; and 
so,  Claude  possesses  some  species  of  sterling  excellence, 
but  it  follows  not  that  he  may  not  be  excelled  by  Turner. 

The  second  point  on  which  I would  insist  is  that  if  a 
mind  were  to  arise  of  such  power  as  to  be  capable  of 
equalling  or  excelling  some  of  the  greatest  works  of  past 
ages,  the  productions  of  such  a mind  would,  in  all  prob- 
ability, be  totally  different  in  manner  and  matter  from 
all  former  XDroductions ; for  the  more  powerful  the  intel- 
lect, the  less  will  its  works  resemble  those  of  other  men, 
whether  predecessors  or  contemporaries.  Instead  of 
reasoning,  therefore,  as  we  commonly  do,  in  matters  of 
art,  that  because  such  and  such  a work  does  not  resemble 
that  which  has  hitherto  been  a canon,  therefore  it  must 

* One  or  two  fragments  of  Greek  sculpture,  the  works  of  Michael 
Angelo,  considered  with  reference  to  their  general  conception  and 
power,  and  the  Madonna  di  St.  Sisto,  are  all  that  I should  myself  put 
into  such  a category,  not  that  even  these  are  without  defect,  but  their 
defects  are  such  as  mortality  could  never  hope  to  rectify. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION . 


17 


be  inferior  and  wrong  in  principle ; let  us  rather  admit 
that  there  is  in  its  very  dissimilarity  an  increased  chance 
of  its  being  itself  a new,  and  perhaps,  a higher  canon.  If 
any  production  of  modern  art  can  be  shown  to  have  the 
authority  of  nature  on  its  side,  and  to  be  based  on  eter- 
nal truths,  it  is  ail  so  much  more  in  its  favor,  so  much 
farther  proof  of  its  power,  that  it  is  totally  different  from 
all  that  have  been  before  seen.* 

The  third  point  on  which  I would  insist,  is  that  if  such 
a mind  were  to  arise,  it  would  necessarily  divide  the 
world  of  criticism  into  two  factions  ; the  one,  necessarily 
the  largest  and  loudest,  composed  of  men  incapable  of 
judging*  except  by  precedent,  ignorant  of  general  truth, 
and  acquainted  only  with  such  particular  truths  as  may 
have  been  illustrated  or  pointed  out  to  them  by  former 
works,  which  class  would  of  course  be  violent  in  vituper- 
ation, and  increase  in  animosity  as  the  master  departed 
farther  from  their  particular  and  preconceived  canons  of 
right, — thus  wounding  their  vanity  by  impugning  their 
judgment ; the  other,  necessarily  narrow  of  number,  com- 
posed of  men  of  general  knowledge  and  unbiassed  habits 
of  thought,  who  would  recognize  in  the  work  of  the  dar- 
ing innovator  a record  and  illustration  of  facts  before  un- 
seized, who  would  justly  and  candidly  estimate  the  value 
of  the  truths  so  rendered,  and  would  increase  in  fervor 

* This  principle  is  dangerous,  but  not  the  less  true,  and  necessary  to 
be  kept  in  mind.  There  is  scarcely  any  truth  which  does  not  admit  of 
being  wrested  to  purposes  of  evil,  and  we  must  not  deny  the  desirable- 
ness of  originality,  because  men  may  err  in  seeking  for  it,  or  because  a 
pretence  to  it  may  be  made,  by  presumption,  a cloak  for  its  incompe- 
tence, Nevertheless,  originality  is  never  to  be  sought  for  its  own  sake 
— otherwise  it  will  be  mere  aberration — it  should  arise  naturally  out 
of  hard,  independent  study  of  nature  ; and  it  should  be  rejpembered 
that  in  many  things  technical,  it  is  impossible  to  alter  without  being 
inferior,  for  therein,  as  says  Spencer,  “ Truth  is  one,  and  right  is  ever 
one  but  wrongs  are  various  and  multitudinous.  “ Vice,”  says  By- 
ron, in  Marino  Faliero,  “ must  have  variety  ; but  Virtue  stands  like 
the  sun,  and  all  which  rolls  around  drinks  life  from  her  aspect.” 

2 


13 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


of  admiration  as  tlie  master  strode  farther  and  deeper,  and 
more  daringly  into  dominions  before  unsearched  or  un- 
known ; yet  diminishing  in  multitude  as  they  increased 
in  enthusiasm : for  by  how  much  their  leader  became 
more  impatient  in  his  step — more  impetuous  in  his  suc- 
cess— more  exalting  in  his  research,  by  so  much  must 
the  number  capable  of  following  him  become  narrower, 
until  at  last,  supposing  him  never  to  pause  in  his  ad- 
vance, he  might  be  left  in  the  very  culminating  moment 
of  his  consummate  achievement,  with  but  a faithful  few 
by  his  side,  his  former  disciples  fallen  away,  his  former 
enemies  doubled  in  numbers  and  virulence,  and  the  evi- 
dence of  his  supremacy  only  to  be  wrought  out  by  the 
devotion  of  men’s  lives  to  the  earnest  study  of  the  new 
truths  he  had  discovered  and  recorded. 

Such  a mind  has  arisen  in  our  days.  It  has  gone  on 
from  strength  to  strength,  laying  open  fields  of  conquest 
peculiar  to  itself.  It  has  occasioned  such  schism  in  the 
schools  of  criticism  as  was  beforehand  to  be  expected,  and 
it  is  now  at  the  zenith  of  its  power,  and,  consequently,  in 
the  last  phase  of  declining  popularity. 

Tliis  I know,  and  can  prove.  No  man,  says  Southey, 
was  ever  yet  convinced  of  any  momentous  truth  without 
feeling  in  himself  the  power,  as  well  as  the  desire  of 
communicating  it.  In  asserting  and  demonstrating  the 
supremacy  of  this  great  master,  I shall  both  do  immedi- 
ate service  to  the  cause  of  right  art,  and  shall  be  able  to 
illustrate  many  principles  of  landscape  painting  which 
are  of  general  application,  and  have  hitherto  been  .unac- 
knowledged. 

For  anything  like  immediate  effect  on  the  public  mind, 
I do  not  hope.  “We  mistake  men’s  diseases,”  says 
Richard  Baxter,  “ when  we  think  there  needeth  nothing 
to  cure  them  of  their  errors  but  the  evidence  of  truth. 
Alas ! there  are  many  distempers  of  mind  to  be  removed 
before  they  receive  that  evidence.”  Nevertheless,  when 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION 


19 


it  is  fully  laid  before  them,  my  duty  will  be  done.  Con- 
viction will  follow  in  due  time. 

I do  not  consider  myself  as  in  any  way  addressing, 
or  having  to  do  with,  the  ordinary  critics  of  the  press. 
Their  writings  are  not  the  guide,  but  the  expression,  of 
public  opinion.  A writer  for  a newspaper  naturally  and 
necessarily  endeavors  to  meet,  as  nearly  as  he  can,  the 
feelings  of  the  majority  of  his  readers;  his  bread  de- 
pends on  his  doing  so.  Precluded  by  the  nature  of  his 
occupations  from  gaining  any  knowledge  of  art,  he  is 
sure  that  he  can  gain  credit  for  it  by  expressing  the 
opinions  of  his  readers.  He  mocks  the  picture  which 
the  public  pass,  and  bespatters  with  praise  the  canvas 
which  a crowd  concealed  from  him. 

Writers  like  the  present  critic  of  Blackwood’s  Maga- 
azine  * deserve  more  respect — the  respect  due  to  honest, 
hopeless,  helpless  imbecility.  There  is  something  ex- 
alted in  the  innocence  of  their  feeble-mindedness : one 
cannot  suspect  them  of  partiality,  for  it  implies  feeling ; 
nor  of  prejudice,  for  it  implies  some  previous  ac- 
quaintance with  their  subject.  I do  not  know  that  even 
in  this  age  of  charlatanry,  I could  point  to  a more 
barefaced  instance  of  imposture  on  the  simplicity  of  the 
public,  than  the  insertion  of  these  pieces  of  criticism  in  a 
respectable  periodical.  We  are  not  insulted  with  opin- 

*It  is  with  regret  that,  in  a work  of  this  nature,  I take  notice  of 
criticisms,  which,  after  all,  are  merely  intended  to  amuse  the  careless 
reader,  and  be  forgotten  as  soon  as  read  ; but  I do  so  in  compliance 
with  wishes  expressed  to  me  since  the  publication  of  this  work,  by  per- 
sons who  have  the  interests  of  art  deeply  at  heart,  and  who,  I find, 
attach  more  importance  to  the  matter  than  I should  have  been  dis- 
posed to  do.  I have,  therefore,  marked  two  or  three  passages  which 
may  enable  the  public  to  judge  for  themselves  of  the  quality  of  these 
critiques ; and  this  I think  a matter  of  justice  to  those  who  might 
otherwise  have  been  led  astray  by  them — more  than  this  I cannot  con* 
sent  to  do.  I should  have  but  a hound’s  office  if  I had  to  tear  the  ta- 
bard from  every  Rouge  Sanglier  of  the  arts — with  bell  and  bauble  to 
back  him. 


20 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOXI)  EDIT10X. 


ions  on  music  from  persons  ignorant  of  its  notes:  nor 
with  treatises  on  philology  by  persons  unacquainted 
with  the  alphabet ; but  here  is  page  after  page  of  criti- 
cism, which  one  may  read  from  end  to  end,  looking  for 
something  which  the  writer  knows,  and  finding  nothing. 
Not  his  own  language,  for  he  has  to  look  in  his  diction- 
ary, by  his  own  confession,  for  a word  * occurring  in  one 
of  the  most  important  chapters  of  his  Bible;  not  the 
commonest  traditions  of  the  schools,  for  he  does  not  know 
why  Poussin  was  called  “ learned ; ” f not  the  most  sim- 
ple canons  of  art,  for  he  prefers  Lee  to  Gainsborough ; % 

* Chrysoprase  (Vide  No.  for  October,  1842,  p.  502). 

f Every  scliool-boy  knows  that  this  epithet  was  given  to  Poussin  in 
allusion  to  the  profound  classical  knowledge  of  the  painter.  The  re- 
viewer, however  (September,  1841),  informs  us  that  the  expression 
refers  to  his  skill  in  “ Composition.” 

X Critique  on  Royal  Academy,  1842.  “He”  (Mr.  Lee)  “ often  re- 
minds us  of  Gainsborough’s  best  manner;  but  lie  is  superior  to  him 
always  in  subject,  composition,  and  variety.” — Shade  of  Gainsborough! 
— deep-thouglited,  solemn  Gainsborough — forgive  us  for  re-writing 
this  sentence  ; we  do  so  to  gibbet  its  perpetrator  forever, — and  leave 
him  swinging  in  the  winds  of  the  Fool’s  Paradise.  It  is  with  great  pain 
that  I ever  speak  with  severity  of  the  works  of  living  masters,  espe- 
cially when,  like  Mr.  Lee’s,  they  are  well-intentioned,  simple,  free 
from  affectation  or  imitation,  and  evidently  painted  with  constant 
reference  to  nature.  But  I believe  that  these  qualities  will  always  se- 
cure him  that  admiration  which  he  deserves— that  there  will  be  many 
unsophisticated  and  honest  minds  always  ready  to  follow  his  guid- 
ance, and  answrer  his  efforts  with  delight ; and  therefore,  that  I need 
not  fear  to  point  out  in  him  the  w*ant  of  those  technical  qualities 
which  are  more  especially  the  object  of  an  artist’s  admiration. 
Gainsborough’s  powder  of  color  (it  is  mentioned  by  Sir  Joshua  as  his 
peculiar  gift)  is  capable  of  taking  rank  beside  that  of  Rubens  ; he  is 
the  purest  colorist — Sir  Joshua  himself  not  excepted — of  the  whole 
English  school ; with  him,  in  fact,  the  art  of  painting  did  in  great 
part  die,  and  exists  not  now  in  Europe.  Evidence  enough  will  be 
seen  in  the  following  pages  of  my  devoted  admiration  of  Turner  ; but 
I hesitate  not  to  say,  that  in  management  and  quality  of  single  and 
particular  tint,  in  the  purely  technical  part  of  painting,  Turner  is  a 
child  of  Gainsborough.  Now,  Mr.  Lee  never  aims  at  color  ; he  does 
not  make  it  his  object  in  the  slightest  degree — the  spring  green  of 


PREFACE  TO  TEE  SECOND  EDITION. 


21 


not  the  most  ordinary  facts  of  nature,  for  we  find  him 
puzzled  by  the  epithet  “ silver,”  as  applied  to  the  orange 
blossom, — evidently  never  having  seen  anything  silvery 
about  an  orange  in  his  life,  except  a spoon.  Nay,  he 
leaves  us  not  to  conjecture  his  calibre  from  internal  evi- 
dence ; he  candidly  tells  us  (Oct.  1842)  that  he  has  been 
studying  trees  only  for  the  last  week,  and  bases  his  criti- 
cal remarks  chiefly  on  his  practical  experience  of  birch. 
More  disinterested  than  our  friend  Sancho,  he  would 
disenchant  the  public  from  the  magic  of  Turner  by  vir- 
tue of  his  own  flagellation ; Xanthias-like,  he  would  rob 

vegetation  is  all  that  he  desires  ; and  it  would  be  about  as  rational  to 
compare  his  works  with  studied  pieces  of  coloring,  as  the  modulation 
of  the  Calabrian  pipe  to  the  harmony  of  a full  orchestra.  Gainsbor- 
ough’s hand  is  as  light  as  the  sweep  of  a cloud — as  swift  as  the  flash 
of  a sunbeam  ; Lee’s  execution  is  feeble  and  spotty.  Gainsborough’s 
masses  are  as  broad  as  the  first  division  in  heaven  of  light  from  dark- 
ness ; Lee’s  (perhaps  necessarily,  considering  the  effects  of  flickering 
sunlight  at  which  he  aims)  are  as  fragmentary  as  his  leaves,  and  as 
numerous.  Gainsborough’s  forms  are  grand,  simple,  and  ideal  ; Lee’s 
are  small,  confused,  and  unselected.  Gainsborough  never  loses  sight 
of  his  picture  as  a whole  ; Lee  is  but  too  apt  to  be  shackled  by  its 
parts.  In  a word,  Gainsborough  is  an  immortal  painter  ; and  Lee, 
though  on  the  right  road,  is  yet  in  the  early  stages  of  his  art ; and  the 
man  who  could  imagine  any  resemblance  or  point  of  comparison  be- 
tween them,  is  not  only  a novice  in  art,  but  has  not  capacity  ever 
to  be  anything  more.  He  may  be  pardoned  for  not  comprehending 
Turner,  for  long  preparation  and  discipline  are  necessary  before  the 
abstract  and  profound  philosophy  of  that  artist  can  be  met ; but  Gains- 
borough’s excellence  is  based  on  principles  of  art  long  acknowledged, 
and  facts  of  nature  universally  apparent  ; and  I insist  more  particu- 
larly on  the  reviewer’s  want  of  feeling  for  his  works,  because  it 
proves  a truth  of  which  the  public  ought  especially  to  be  assured  that 
those  who  lavish  abuse  on  the  great  men  of  modern  times,  are  equally 
incapable  of  perceiving  the  real  excellence  of  established  canons,  are 
ignorant  of  the  commonest  and  most  acknowledged  principia  of  the 
art,  blind  to  the  most  palpable  and  comprehensible  of  its  beauties,  in- 
capable of  distinguishing,  if  left  to  themselves,  a master’s  work  from 
the  vilest  school  copy,  and  founding  their  applause,  of  those  great 
works  which  they  praise,  either  in  pure  hypocrisy,  or  in  admiration 
of  their  defects. 


22 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION 


liis  master  of  immortality  by  his  own  powers  of  endur- 
ance. What  is  Christopher  North  about  ? Does  he  re- 
ceive his  critiques  from  Eton  or  Harrow — based  on 
the  experience  of  a week’s  birds’-nesting  and  its  conse- 
quences ? How  low  must  art  and  its  interests  sink,  when 
the  public  mind  is  inadequate  to  the  detection  of  this 
effrontery  of  incapacity ! In  all  kindness  to  Maga,  we 
warn  her,  that,  though  the  nature  of  this  work  precludes 
us  from  devoting  space  to  the  exposure,  there  may  come 
a time  when  the  public  shall  be  themselves  able  to  dis- 
tinguish ribaldry  from  reasoning,  and  may  require  some 
better  and  higher  qualifications  in  their  critics  of  art, 
than  the  experience  of  a school-boy,  and  the  capacities 
of  a buffoon. 

It  is  not,  however,  merely  to  vindicate  the  reputation 
of  those  whom  writers  like  these  defame,  which  would 
but  be  to  anticipate  by  a few  years  the  natural  and  in- 
evitable reaction  of  the  public  mind,  that  I am  devoting 
years  of  labor  to  the  development  of  the  principles  on 
which  the  great  productions  of  recent  art  are  based.  I 
have  a higher  end  in  view — one  which  may,  I think, 
justify  me,  not  only  in  the  sacrifice  of  my  own  time,  but 
in  calling  on  my  readers  to  follow  me  through  an  inves- 
tigation far  more  laborious  than  could  be  adequately  re- 
warded by  mere  insight  into  the  merits  of  a particular 
master,  or  the  spirit  of  a particular  age. 

It  is  a question  which,  in  spite  of  the  claims  of  Paint- 
ing to  be  called  the  Sister  of  Poetry,  appears  to  me  to 
admit  of  considerable  doubt,  whether  art  has  ever,  exceiDt 
in  its  earliest  and  rudest  stages,  possessed  anything  like 
efficient  moral  influence  on  mankind.  Better  the  state  of 
Borne  when  ££magnorum  artificum  frangebat  pocula 
miles,  ut  phaleris  gauderet  equus,”  than  when  her  walls 
flashed  with  the  marble  and  the  gold,  ££nec  cessabat 
luxuria  id  agere,  ut  quam  plurimum  incendiis  perdat.” 
Better  the  state  of  religion  in  Italy,  before  Giotto  had 


PREFACE  TO  TEE  SECOND  EDITION. 


23 


broken  on  one  barbarism  of  the  Byzantine  schools,  than 
when  the  painter  of  the  Last  Judgment,  and  the  sculptor 
of  the  Perseus,  sat  re  Yelling  side  by  side.  It  appears  to 
me  that  a rude  symbol  is  oftener  more  efficient  than  a 
refined  one  in  touching  the  heart,  and  that  as  pictures 
rise  in  rank  as  works  of  art,  they  are  regarded  with  less 
devotion  and  more  curiosity. 

But,  however  this  may  be,  and  whatever  influence  we 
may  be  disposed  to  admit  in  the  great  works  of  sacred 
art,  no  doubt  can,  I think,  be  reasonably  entertained  as 
to  the  utter  inutility  of  all  that  has  been  hitherto  accom- 
plished by  the  painters  of  landscape.  No  moral  end  has 
been  answered,  no  permanent  good  effected,  by  any  of 
fcheir  works.  They  may  have  amused  the  intellect,  or 
exercised  the  ingenuity,  but  they  never  have  spoken  to 
the  heart.  Landscape  art  has  never  taught  us  one  deep 
or  holy  lesson ; it  has  not  recorded  that  which  is  fleet- 
ing, nor  penetrated  that  which  was  hidden,  nor  inter- 
preted that  which  was  obscure ; it  has  never  made  us  feel 
the  wonder,  nor  the  power,  nor  the  glory,  of  the  universe ; 
it  has  not  prompted  to  devotion,  nor  touched  with  awe ; 
its  power  to  move  and  exalt  the  heart  has  been  fatally 
abused,  and  perished  in  the  abusing.  That  which  ought 
to  have  been  a witness  to  the  omnipotence  of  God,  has 
become  an  exhibition  of  the  dexterity  of  man,  and  that 
which  should  have  lifted  our  thoughts  to  the  throne  of 
the  Deity,  has  encumbered  them  with  the  inventions  of 
his  creatures. 

If  we  stand  for  a little  time  before  any  of  the  more 
celebrated  works  of  landscape,  listening  to  the  comments 
of  the  passers-by,  we  shall  hear  numberless  expressions 
relating  to  the  skill  of  the  artist,  but  very  few  relating 
to  the  perfection  of  nature.  Hundreds  will  be  voluble 
in  admiration,  for  one  who  will  be  silent  in  delight. 
Multitudes  will  laud  the  composition,  and  depart  with 
the  praise  of  Claude  on  their  lips, — not  one  will  feel  as  if 


24 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


it  were  no  composition,  and  depart  witli  the  praise  of 
God  in  his  heart. 

These  are  the  signs  of  a debased,  mistaken,  and  false 
school  of  painting*.  The  skill  of  the  artist,  and  the  per- 
fection of  his  art,  are  never  proved  until  both  are  forgot- 
ten. The  artist  has  done  nothing  till  he  has  concealed 
himself, — the  art  is  imperfect  which  is  visible, — the  feel- 
ings are  but  feebly  touched,  if  they  permit  us  to  reason 
on  the  methods  of  their  excitement.  In  the  reading  of 
a great  poem,  in  the  hearing  of  a noble  oration,  it  is  the 
subject  of  the  writer,  and  not  his  skill, — his  passion,  not 
his  power,  on  which  our  minds  are  fixed.  We  see  as  he 
sees,  but  we  see  not  him.  We  become  part  of  him,  feel 
with  him,  judge,  behold  with  him  ; but  we  think  of  him 
as  little  as  of  ourselves.  Do  we  think  of  iEschylus  while 
we  wait  on  the  silence  of  Cassandra,*  or  of  Shakspeare, 
while  we  listen  to  the  wailing  of  Lear  ? Not  so.  The 
power  of  the  masters  is  shown  by  their  self-annihilation. 
It  is  commensurate  with  the  degree  in  which  they  them- 
selves appear  not  in  their  work.  The  harp  of  the 
minstrel  is  untruly  touched,  if  his  own  glory  is  all  that  it 
records.  Every  great  writer  may  be  at  once  known  by 
his  guiding  the  mind  far  from  himself,  to  the  beauty 
which  is  not  of  his  creation,  and  the  knowledge  which  is 
past  his  finding  out. 

And  must  it  ever  be  otherwise  with  painting,  for  other- 
wise it  has  ever  been.  Her  subjects  have  been  regarded 

* There  is  a fine  touch  in  the  Progs  in  Aristophanes,  alluding 
probably  to  this  part  of  the  Agamemnon.  “ "Eyh  S’  exaiP0V  TV  Kal 

r otr'  ercpireu  ovk  ?j ttov  i]  vvv  bi  a aXovvTesP  The  same  remark  might 
be  well  applied  to  the  seemingly  vacant  or  incomprehensible  portions 
of  Turner’s  canvas.  In  their  mysterious  and  intense  fire,  there  is 
much  correspondence  between  the  mind  of  ^Eschylus  and  that  of  our 
great  painter.  They  share  at  least  one  thing  in  common — unpopular- 
ity. ‘O  drjfjLOS  avefiba  Kpifftv  ttolciv  HA.  b roov  rravovpy<av  ; AT.  vij  A i.  ovpaviov 
y*  ttcrov.  HA.  fxer  AlffxvAov  5’  ovk  ftaav  erepoi  avup.axot  AI.  oKiyov  rb 

XPf]<Tr6v  6TT iV. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION.  25 

as  mere  themes  on  which  the  artist’s  power  is  to  be  dis- 
played ; and  that  power,  be  it  of  imitation,  composition, 
idealization,  or  of  whatever  other  kind,  is  the  chief  object 
of  the  spectator’s  observation.  It  is  man  and  his  fancies, 
man  and  his  trickeries,  man  and  his  inventions, — poor, 
paltry,  weak,  self-sighted  man, — which  the  connoisseur 
forever  seeks  and  worships.  Among  potsherds  and  dung- 
hills, among  drunken  boors  and  withered  beldames, 
through  every  scene  of  debauchery  and  degradation,  we 
follow  the  erring  artist,  not  to  receive  one  wholesome 
lesson,  not  to  be  touched  with  pity,  nor  moved  with  in- 
dignation, but  to  watch  the  dexterity  of  the  pencil,  and 
gloat  over  the  glittering  of  the  hue. 

I speak  not  only  of  the  works  of  the  Flemish 
school  — I wage  no  war  with  their  admirers;  they 
may  be  left  in  peace  to  count  the  spiculse  of  hay- 
stacks and  the  hairs  of  donkeys — it  is  also  of  works  of 
real  mind  that  X speak, — works  in  which  there  are  evi- 
dences of  genius  and  workings  of  power, — works  which 
have  been  held  up  as  containing  all  of  the  beautiful  that 
art  can  reach  or  man  conceive.  And  I assert  with  sorrow, 
that  all  hitherto  done  in  landscape,  by  those  commonly 
conceived  its  masters,  has  never  prompted  one  holy 
thought  in  the  minds  of  nations.  It  has  begun  and  ended 
in  exhibiting  the  dexterities  of  individuals,  and  conven- 
tionalities of  systems.  Filling  the  world  with  the  honor 
of  Claude  and  Salvator,  it  has  never  once  tended  to  the 
honor  of  God. 

Does  the  reader  start  in  reading  these  last  words,  as  if 
they  were  those  of  wild  enthusiasm, — as  if  I were  lower- 
ing the  dignity  of  religion  by  supposing  that  its  cause 
could  be  advanced  by  such  means  ? His  surprise  proves 
my  position.  It  does  sound  like  wild,  like  absurd  en- 
thusiasm, to  expect  any  definite  moral  agency  in  the  paint- 
ers of  landscape;  but  ought  it  so  to  sound?  Are  the 
gorgeousness  of  the  visible  hue,  the  glory  of  the  real- 


26 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


ized  form,  instruments  in  the  artist’s  hand  so  ineffective, 
that  they  can  answer  no  nobler  purpose  than  the  amuse- 
ment of  curiosity,  or  the  engagement  of  idleness  ? Must 
it  not  be  owing  to  gross  neglect  or  misapplication  of  the 
means  at  his  command,  that  while  words  and  tones  (means 
of  representing  nature  surely  less  powerful  than  lines  and 
colors)  can  kindle  and  purify  the  very  inmost  souls  of 
men,  the  painter  can  only  hope  to  entertain  by  his  efforts 
at  expression,  and  must  remain  forever  brooding  over 
his  incommunicable  thoughts  ? 

The  cause  of  the  evil  lies,  I believe,  deep-seated  in  the 
system  of  ancient  landscape  art ; it  consists,  in  a word, 
in  the  painter’s  taking  upon  him  to  modify  God’s  works 
at  his  pleasure,  casting  the  shadow  of  himself  on  all  he 
sees,  constituting  himself  arbiter  where  it  is  honor  to  be 
a disciple,  and  exhibiting  his  ingenuity  by  the  attain- 
ment of  combinations  whose  highest  praise  is  that  they 
are  impossible.  We  shall  not  pass  through  a single 
gallery  of  old  art,  without  hearing  this  topic  of  praise 
confidently  advanced.  The  sense  of  artificialness,  the 
absence  of  all  appearance  of  reality,  the  clumsiness  of 
combination  by  which  the  meddling  of  man  is  made 
evident,  and  the  feebleness  of  his  hand  branded  on  the 
inorganization  of  his  monstrous  creature,  is  advanced  as 
a proof  of  inventive  power,  as  an  evidence  of  abstracted 
conception ; — nay,  the  violation  of  specific  form,  the  utter 
abandonment  of  all  organic  and  individual  character  of 
object,  (numberless  examples  of  which  from  the  works 
of  the  old  masters  are  given  in  the  following  pages,)  is 
constantly  held  up  by  the  unthinking  critic  as  the  foun- 
dation of  the  grand  or  historical  style,  and  the  first  step 
to  the  attainment  of  a pure  ideal.  Now,  there  is  but  one 
grand  style,  in  the  treatment  of  all  subjects  whatsoever, 
and  that  style  is  based  on  the  perfect  knowledge,  and 
consists  in  the  simple,  unencumbered  rendering,  of  the 
specific  characters  of  the  given  object,  be  it  man,  beast, 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


27 


or  flower.  Every  change,  caricature,  or  abandonment  of 
such  specific  character,  is  as  destructive  of  grandeur  as  it 
is  of  truth,  of  beauty  as  of  propriety.  Every  alteration 
of  the  features  of  nature  has  its  origin  either  in  power- 
less indolence  or  blind  audacity,  in  the  folly  which  for- 
gets, or  the  insolence  which  desecrates,  works  which  it  is 
the  pride  of  angels  to  know,  and  their  privilege  to  love. 

We  sometimes  hear  such  infringement  of  universal 
laws  justified  on  the  plea,  that  the  frequent  introduction 
of  mythological  abstractions  into  ancient  landscape  re- 
quires an  imaginary  character  of  form  in  the  material 
objects  with  which  they  are  associated.  Something  of 
this  kind  is  hinted  in  Reynolds’s  14th  Discourse ; but 
nothing  can  be  more  false  than  such  reasoning.  If  there 
be  any  truth  or  beauty  in  the  original  conception  of  the 
spiritual  being  so  introduced,  there  must  be  a true  and 
real  connection  between  that  abstract  idea*  and  the  feat- 
ures of  nature  as  she  was  and  is.  The  woods  and  waters 
which  were  peopled  by  the  Greek  with  typical  life  were 
not  different  from  those  which  now  wave  and  murmur  by 
the  ruins  of  his  shrines.  With  their  visible  and  actual 
forms  was  his  imagination  filled,  and  the  beauty  of  its 

* I do  not  know  any  passage  in  ancient  literature  in  which  this  con- 
nection is  more  exquisitely  illustrated  than  in  the  lines,  burlesque 
though  they  be,  descriptive  of  the  approach  of  the  chorus  in  the  Clouds 
of  Aristophanes — a writer,  by  the  way,  who,  I believe,  knew  and 
felt  more  of  the  noble  landscape  character  of  his  country  than  any 
whose  w7orks  have  come  down  to  us  except  Homer.  The  individuality 
and  distinctness  of  conception  — the  visible  cloud  character  which 
every  word  of  this  particular  passage  brings  out  into  more  dewy  and 
bright  existence,  are  to  me  as  refreshing  as  the  real  breathing  of 
mountain  winds.  The  line  “ dia  r&v  koIXuv  kclI  r&v  5ct<reW,  TrActyjai,’' 
could  have  been  written  by  none  but  an  ardent  lover  of  hill  scenery — ■ 
one  who  had  watched,  hour  after  hour,  the  peculiar  oblique,  side- 
long action  of  descending  clouds,  as  they  form  along  the  hollows  and 
ravines  of  the  hills.  There  are  no  lumpish  solidities — no  pillowy 
protuberances  here.  All  is  melting,  drifting,  evanescent — full  of  air, 
and  light,  and  dew. 


28 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


incarnate  creatures  can  only  be  understood  among  tlie 
pure  realities  which  originally  modelled  their  concep- 
tion. If  divinity  be  stamped  upon  the  features,  or  ap- 
parent in  the  form  of  the  spiritual  creature,  the  mind  will 
not  be  shocked  by  its  ajjpearing  to  ride  upon  the  whirl- 
wind, and  trample  on  the  storm  ; but  if  mortality,  no  vio- 
lation of  the  characters  of  the  earth  will  forge  one  single 
link  to  bind  it  to  the  heaven. 

Is  there  then  no  such  thing  as  elevated  ideal  charac- 
ter of  landscape  ? Undoubtedly  ; and  Sir  Joshua,  with 
the  great  master  of  this  character,  Nicolo  Poussin,  pres- 
ent to  his  thoughts,  ought  to  have  arrived  at  more  true 
conclusions  respecting  its  essence  than,  as  we  shall  pres- 
ently see,  are  deducible  from  his  works.  The  true  ideal 
of  landscape  is  precisely  the  same  as  that  of  the  human 
form ; it  is  the  expression  of  the  specific — not  the  indi- 
vidual, but  the  specific  — characters  of  every  object,  in 
their  perfection ; there  is  an  ideal  form  of  every  herb, 
flower,  and  tree : it  is  that  form  to  which  every  individ- 
ual of  the  species  has  a tendency  to  arrive,  freed  from 
the  influence  of  accident  or  disease.  Every  landscape 
painter  should  know  the  specific  characters  of  every  ob- 
ject he  has  to  represent,  rock,  flower,  or  cloud ; and  in 
his  highest  ideal  works,  all  their  distinctions  will  be 
perfectly  expressed,  broadly  or  delicately,  slightly  or 
completely,  according  to  the  nature  of  the  subject,  and 
the  degree  of  attention  which  is  to  be  drawn  to  the  par- 
ticular object  by  the  part  it  plays  in  the  composition. 
'Where  the  sublime  is  aimed  at,  such  distinctions  will  be 
indicated  with  severe  simplicity,  as  the  muscular  mark- 
ings in  a colossal  statue ; where  beauty  is  the  object, 
they  must  be  expressed  with  the  utmost  refinement  of 
which  the  hand  is  capable. 

This  may  sound  like  a contradiction  of  principles  ad- 
vanced by  the  highest  authorities ; but  it  is  only  a con- 
tradiction of  a particular  and  most  mistaken  application 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION 


29 


of  them.  Much  evil  has  been  done  to  art  by  the  remarks 
of  historical  painters  on  landscape.  Accustomed  them- 
selves to  treat  their  backgrounds  slightly  and  boldly, 
and  feeling  (though,  as  I shall  presently  show,  only  in 
consequence  of  their  own  deficient  powers)  that  any  ap- 
proach to  completeness  of  detail  therein,  injures  their 
picture  by  interfering  with  its  principal  subject,  they 
naturally  lose  sight  of  the  peculiar  and  intrinsic  beauties 
of  things  which  to  them  are  injurious,  unless  subordinate. 
Hence  the  frequent  advice  given  by  Reynolds  and  others, 
to  neglect  specific  form  in  landscape,  and  treat  its  mate- 
rials in  large  masses,  aiming  only  at  general  truths, — the 
flexibility  of  foliage,  but  not  its  kind ; the  rigidity  of 
rock,  but  not  its  mineral  character.  In  the  passage  more 
especially  bearing  on  this  subject  (in  the  eleventh  lecture 
of  Sir  J.  Reynolds),  we  are  told  that  “ the  landscape 
painter  works  not  for  the  virtuoso  or  the  naturalist,  but 
for  the  general  observer  of  life  and  nature.”  This  is  true, 
in  precisely  the  same  sense  that  the  sculptor  does  not 
work  for  the  anatomist,  but  for  the  common  observer  of 
life  and  nature.  Yet  the  sculptor  is  not,  for  this  reason, 
permitted  to  be  wanting  either  in  knowledge  or  expres- 
sion of  anatomical  detail ; and  the  more  refined  that  ex- 
pression can  be  rendered,  the  more  perfect  is  his  work. 
That  which,  to  the  anatomist,  is  the  end, — is,  to  the  sculp- 
tor, the  means.  The  former  desires  details,  for  their  own 
sake ; the  latter,  that  by  means  of  them,  he  may  kindle 
his  work  with  life,  and  stamp  it  with  beauty.  And  so  in 
landscape  ; — botanical  or  geological  details  are  not  to  be 
given  as  matter  of  curiosity  or  subject  of  search,  but  as 
the  ultimate  elements  of  every  species  of  expression  and 
order  of  loveliness. 

In  his  observations  on  the  foreground  of  the  St.  Pietro 
Martire,  Sir  Joshua  advances,  as  matter  of  praise,  that 
the  plants  are  discriminated  “ just  as  much  as  was  neces- 
sary for  variety,  and  no  more.”  Had  this  foreground 


30 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


been  occupied  by  a group  of  animals,  we  should  have 
been  surprised  to  be  told  that  the  lion,  the  serpent,  and 
the  dove,  or  whatever  other  creatures  might  have  been 
introduced,  were  distinguished  from  each  other  just  as 
much  as  was  necessary  for  variety,  and  no  more.  Yet  is 
it  to  be  supposed  that  the  distinctions  of  the  vegetable 
world  are  less  complete,  less  essential,  or  less  divine  in 
origin,  than  those  of  the  animal  ? If  the  distinctive  forms 
of  animal  life  are  meant  for  our  reverent  observance,  is  it 
likely  that  those  of  vegetable  life  are  made  merely  to  bo 
swept  away  ? The  latter  are  indeed  less  obvious  and  less 
obtrusive;  for  which  very  reason  there  is  less  excuse 
for  omitting  them,  because  there  is  less  danger  of  their 
disturbing  the  attention  or  engaging  the  fancy. 

But  Sir  Joshua  is  as  inaccurate  in  fact,  as  false  in  prin- 
ciple. He  himself  furnishes  a most  singular  instance  of 
the  very  error  of  which  he  accuses  Yaseni, — the  seeing 
what  he  expects ; or,  rather,  in  the  present  case,  not  see- 
ing what  he  does  not  expect.  The  great  masters  of  Italy, 
almost  without  exception,  and  Titian  perhaps  more  than 
any  (for  he  had  the  highest  knowledge  of  landscape),  are 
in  the  constant  habit  of  rendering  every  detail  of  their 
foregrounds  with  the  most  laborious  botanical  fidelity : 
witness  the  “ Bacchus  and  Ariadne,”  in  which  the  fore- 
ground is  occupied  by  the  common  blue  iris,  the  aquile- 
gia,  and  the  wild  rose ; every  stamen  of  which  latter  is 
given,  while  the  blossoms  and  leaves  of  the  columbine 
(a  difficult  flower  to  draw)  have  been  studied  with  the 
most  exquisite  accuracy.  The  foregrounds  of  Baffaelle’s 
two  cartoons — “ The  Miraculous  Draught  of  Fishes  ” and 
“ The  Charge  to  Peter  ” — are  covered  with  plants  of  the 
common  sea  colewort  {crambe  maritima),  of  which  the 
sinuated  leaves  and  clustered  blossoms  would  have  ex- 
hausted the  patience  of  any  other  artist ; but  have  ap- 
peared worthy  of  prolonged  and  thoughtful  labor  to  the 
great  mind  of  Baffaeile. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION 


31 


It  appears  then,  not  only  from  natural  principles,  but 
from  the  highest  of  all  authority,  that  thorough  knowl- 
edge of  the  lowest  details  is  necessary  and  full  expression 
of  them  right,  even  in  the  highest  class  of  historical 
painting ; that  it  will  not  take  away  from,  nor  interfere 
with,  the  interest  of  the  figures ; but,  rightly  managed, 
must  add  to  and  elucidate  it ; and,  if  further  proof  be 
wanting,  I would  desire  the  reader  to  compare  the  back- 
ground of  Sir  Joshua’s  “Holy  Family,”  in  the  National 
Gallery,  with  that  of  Nicolo  Poussin’s  “ Nursing  of  Ju- 
piter,” in  the  Dulwich  Gallery.  The  first,  owing  to  the 
utter  neglect  of  all  botanical  detail,  has  lost  every  atom 
of  ideal  character,  and  reminds  us  of  nothing  but  an 
English  fashionable  flower  garden  ; — the  formal  pedestal 
adding  considerably  to  the  effect.  Poussin’s,  in  which 
every  vine  leaf  is  drawn  with  consummate  skill  and  untir- 
ing diligence,  produces  not  only  a tree  group  of  the 
most  perfect  grace  and  beauty,  but  one  which,  in  its  pure 
and  simple  truth,  belongs  to  every  age  of  nature,  and 
adapts  itself  to  the  history  of  all  time.  If,  then,  such 
entire  rendering  of  specific  character  be  necessary  to  the 
historical  painter,  in  cases  where  these  lower  details  are 
entirely  subordinate  to  his  human  subject,  how  much 
more  must  it  be  necessary  in  landscape,  where  they 
themselves  constitute  the  subject,  and  where  the  undi- 
vided attention  is  to  be  drawn  to  them. 

There  is  a singular  sense  in  which  the  child  may  pe- 
culiarly be  said  to  be  father  of  the  man.  In  many  arts 
and  attainments,  the  first  and  last  stages  of  progress — 
the  infancy  and  the  consummation — have  many  features 
in  common ; while  the  intermediate  stages  are  wholly 
unlike  either,  and  are  farthest  from  the  right.  Thus  it 
is  in  the  progress  of  a painter’s  handling.  We  see  the 
perfect  child, — the  absolute  beginner,  using  of  necessity 
a broken,  imperfect,  inadequate  line,  which,  as  he  ad- 
vances, becomes  gradually  firm,  severe,  and  decided.  Yet 


90 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


before  he  becomes  a perfect  artist,  this  severity  and  de- 
cision will  again  be  exchanged  for  a light  and  careless 
stroke,  which  in  many  points  will  far  more  resemble  that 
of  his  childhood  than  of  his  middle  age — differing  from 
it  only  by  the  consummate  effect  wrought  out  by  the 
apparently  inadequate  means.  So  it  is  in  many  matters 
of  opinion.  Our  first  and  last  coincide,  though  on  dif- 
ferent grounds ; it  is  the  middle  stage  which  is  farthest 
from  the  truth.  Childhood  often  holds  a truth  with  its 
feeble  fingers,  which  the  grasp  of  manhood  cannot  re- 
tain,— which  it  is  the  pride  of  utmost  age  to  recover. 

Perhaps  this  is  in  no  instance  more  remarkable  than 
in  the  opinion  we  form  upon  the  subject  of  detail  in 
works  of  art.  Infants  in  judgment,  we  look  for  specific 
character,  and  complete  finish — we  delight  in  the  faith- 
ful plumage  of  the  well-known  bird — in  the  finely  drawn 
leafage  of  the  discriminated  flower.  As  we  advance  in 
judgment,  we  scorn  such  detail  altogether;  we  look  for 
impetuosity  of  execution,  and  breadth  of  effect.  But, 
perfected  in  judgment,  we  return  in  a great  measure  to 
our  early  feelings,  and  thank  Raffaelle  for  the  shells  upon 
his  sacred  beach,  and  for  the  delicate  stamens  of  the 
herbage  beside  his  inspired  St.  Catherine.* 

Of  those  who  take  interest  in  art,  nay,  even  of  artists 
themselves,  there  are  an  hundred  in  the  middle  stage  of 
judgment,  for  one  who  is  in  the  last ; and  this  not  be- 
cause they  are  destitute  of  the  power  to  discover  or  the 
sensibility  to  enjoy  the  truth,  but  because  the  truth 
bears  so  much  semblance  of  error — the  last  stage  of  the 
journey  to  the  first, — that  every  feeling  which  guides  to 
it  is  checked  in  its  origin.  The  rapid  and  powerful  ar- 
tist necessarily  looks  with  such  contempt  on  those  who 

* Let  not  this  principle  be  confused  with  Fuseli’s,  “love  for  what 
is  called  deception  in  painting  marks  either  the  infancy  or  decrepi- 
tude of  a nation’s  taste.”  Realization  to  the  mind  necessitates  not  de- 
ception of  the  eye. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION . 


seek  minutiae  of  detail  rather  than  grandeur  of  impres- 
sion, that  it  is  almost  impossible  for  him  to  conceive  of 
the  great  last  step  in  art,  by  which  both  become  compat- 
ible. He  has  so  often  to  dash  the  delicacy  out  of  the 
pupil’s  work,  and  to  blot  the  details  from  his  encum- 
bered canvas ; so  frequently  to  lament  the  loss  of  breadth 
and  unity,  and  so  seldom  to  reprehend  the  imperfection 
of  minutiae,  that  he  necessarily  looks  upon  complete  parts 
as  the  very  sign  of  error,  weakness  and  ignorance.  Thus, 
frequently  to  the  latest  period  of  his  life,  he  separates, 
like  Sir  Joshua,  as  chief  enemies,  the  details  and  the 
whole,  which  an  artist  cannot  be  great  unless  he  recon- 
ciles ; and  because  details  alone,  and  unreferred  to  a final 
purpose,  are  the  sign  of  a tyro’s  work,  he  loses  sight  of 
the  remoter  truth,  that  details  perfect  in  unity,  and  con- 
tributing to  a final  purpose,  are  the  sign  of  the  produc- 
tion of  a consummate  master. 

It  is  not,  therefore,  detail  sought  for  its  own  sake, — 
not  the  calculable  bricks  of  the  Dutch  house-painters,  nor 
the  numbered  hairs  and  mapped  wrinkles  of  Denner, 
which  constitute  great  art,— they  are  the  lowest  and 
most  contemptible  art ; but  it  is  detail  referred  to  a great 
end, — sought  for  the  sake  of  the  inestimable  beauty 
which  exists  in  the  slightest  and  least  of  God’s  works, 
and  treated  in  a manly,  broad  and  impressive  manner. 
There  may  be  as  much  greatness  of  mind,  as  much  no- 
bility of  manner  in  a master’s  treatment  of  the  smallest 
features,  as  in  his  management  of  the  most  vast;  and 
this  greatness  of  manner  chiefly  consists  in  seizing  the 
specific  character  of  the  object,  together  with  all  the 
great  qualities  of  beauty  which  if  has  in  common  with 
higher  orders  of  existence,*  while  he  utterly  rejects  the 

* I shall  show,  in  a future  portion  of  the  work,  that  there  are  prin- 
ciples of  universal  beauty  common  to  all  the  creatures  of  God  ; and 
that  it  is  by  the  greater  or  less  share  of  these  that  one  form  becomes 
nobler  or  meaner  than  another. 


34 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


meaner  beauties  which  are  accidentally  peculiar  to  the 
object,  and  yet  not  specifically  characteristic  of  it.  I 
cannot  give  a better  instance  than  the  painting’  of  the 
flowers  in  Titian’s  picture  above  mentioned.  While 
every  stamen  of  the  rose  is  given,  because  this  was  nec- 
essary to  mark  the  flower,  and  while  the  curves  and  large 
characters  of  the  leaves  are  rendered  with  exquisite 
fidelity,  there  is  no  vestige  of  particular  texture,  of  moss, 
bloom,  moisture,  or  any  other  accident — no  dew-drops, 
nor  flies,  nor  trickeries  of  any  kind ; nothing  beyond  the 
simple  forms  and  hues  of  the  flowers, — even  those  hues 
themselves  being  simplified  and  broadly  rendered.  The 
varieties  of  aquilegia  have,  in  reality,  a grayish  and  un- 
certain tone  of  color ; and,  I believe,  never  attain  the 
intense  purity  of  blue  with  which  Titian  has  gifted  his 
flower.  But  the  master  does  not  aim  at  the  particular 
color  of  individual  blossoms;  he  seizes  the  type  of  all, 
and  gives  it  with  the  utmost  purity  and  simplicity  of 
which  color  is  capable. 

These  laws  being  observed,  it  will  not  only  be  in  the 
power,  it  will  be  the  duty, — the  imperative  duty, — of 
the  landscape  painter,  to  descend  to  the  lowest  details 
v/ith  undiminished  attention.  Every  herb  and  flower  of 
the  field  has  its  specific,  distinct,  and  perfect  beauty; 
it  has  its  peculiar  habitation,  expression  and  function. 
The  highest  art  is  that  which  seizes  this  specific  charac- 
ter, which  develops  and  illustrates  it,  which  assigns  to 
it  its  proper  position  in  the  landscape,  and  wdiich,  by 
means  of  it,  enhances  and  enforces  the  great  impression 
which  the  picture  is  intended  to  convey.  Nor  is  it  of 
herbs  and  flowers  alone  that  such  scientific  representa- 
tion is  required.  Every  class  of  rock,  every  kind  of 
earth,  every  form  of  cloud,  must  be  studied  with  equal 
industry,  and  rendered  with  equal  precision.  And  thus 
we  find  ourselves  unavoidably  led  to  a conclusion  directly 
opposed  to  that  constantly  enunciated  dogma  of  the 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION 


35 


parrot-critic,  that  the  features  of  nature  must  be  “ gen- 
eralized,”— a dogma  whose  inherent  and  broad  absurdity 
would  long  ago  have  been  detected,  if  it  had  not  con- 
tained in  its  convenient  falsehood  an  apology  for  indo- 
lence, and  a disguise  for  incapacity.  Generalized ! As 
if  it  were  possible  to  generalize  things  genericaily  differ- 
ent. Of  such  common  cant  of  criticism  I extract  a 
characteristic  passage  from  one  of  the  reviews  of  this 
work,  that  in  this  year’s  Athenaeum  for  February  10th : 
“ He  (the  author)  would  have  geological  landscape  paint- 
ers, dendrologic,  meteorologic,  and  doubtless  entomo- 
logic,  ichthyologic,  every  kind  of  physiologic  painter 
united  in  the  same  person ; yet,  alas,  for  true  poetic  art 
among  all  these  learned  Thebans ! No ; landscape  paint- 
ing must  not  be  reduced  to  mere  portraiture  of  inani- 
mate substances,  Denner-like  portraiture  of  the  earth’s 
face.  *****  Ancient  landscapists  took  a broader, 
deeper,  higher  view  of  their  art ; they  neglected  particu- 
lar traits,  and  gave  only  general  features.  Thus  they 
attained  mass  and  force,  harmonious  union  and  simple 
effect,  the  elements  of  grandeur  and  beauty.” 

To  all  such  criticism  as  this  (and  I notice  it  only  be- 
cause it  expresses  the  feelings  into  which  many  sensible 
and  thoughtful  minds  have  been  fashioned  by  infection) 
the  answer  is  simple  and  straightforward.  It  is  just  as 
impossible  to  generalize  granite  and  slate,  as  it  is  to 
generalize  a man  and  a cow.  An  animal  must  be  either 
one  animal  or  another  animal;  it  cannot  be  a general 
animal,  or  it  is  no  animal ; and  so  a rock  must  be  either 
one  rock  or  another  rock ; it  cannot  be  a general  rock,  or 
it  is  no  rock.  If  there  were  a creature  in  the  foreground 
of  a picture,  of  which  he  could  not  decide  whether  it 
were  a pony  or  a pig,  the  Athenseum  critic  would  per- 
haps affirm  it  to  be  a generalization  of  pony  and  pig,  and 
consequently  a high  example  of  “ harmonious  union  and 
simple  effect.”  But  I should  call  it  simple  bad  drawing. 


36 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


And  so  when  there  are  things  in  the  foreground  of  Sal- 
vator of  which  I cannot  pronounce  whether  they  be 
granite  or  slate,  or  tufa,  I affirm  that  there  is  in  them 
neither  harmonious  union  nor  simple  effect,  but  simple 
monstrosity.  There  is  no  grandeur,  no  beauty  of  any  sort 
or  kind;  nothing  but  destruction,  disorganization,  and 
ruin,  to  be  obtained  by  the  violation  of  natural  distinc- 
tions. The  elements  of  brutes  can  only  mix  in  corrup- 
tion, the  elements  of  inorganic  nature  only  in  annihi- 
lation. We  may,  if  we  choose,  put  together  centaur 
monsters ; but  they  must  still  be  half  man,  half  horse ; 
they  cannot  be  both  man  and  horse,  nor  either  man  or 
horse.  And  so,  if  landscape  painters  choose,  they  may 
give  us  rocks  which  shall  be  half  granite  and  half  slate  ; 
but  they  cannot  give  us  rocks  which  shall  be  either 
granite  or  slate,  nor  which  shall  be  both  granite  and  slate. 
Every  attempt  to  produce  that  which  shall  be  any  rock, 
ends  in  the  production  of  that  which  is  no  rock. 

It  is  true  that  the  distinctions  of  rocks  and  plants  and 
clouds  are  less  conspicuous,  and  less  constantly  subjects 
of  observation  than  those  of  the  animal  creation ; but 
the  difficulty  of  observing  them  proves  not  the  merit  of 
overlooking  them.  It  only  accounts  for  the  singular 
fact,  that  the  world  has  never  yet  seen  anything  like  a 
perfect  school  of  landscape.  For  just  as  the  highest 
historical  painting  is  based  on  perfect  knowledge  of  the 
workings  of  the  human  form  and  human  mind,  so  must 
the  highest  landscape  painting  be  based  on  perfect  cog- 
nizance of  the  form,  functions,  and  system  of  every  or- 
ganic or  definitely  structured  existence  which  it  has  to 
represent.  This  proposition  is  self-evident  to  every 
thinking  mind ; and  every  principle  which  appears  to 
contradict  it  is  either  misstated  or  misunderstood.  For 
instance,  the  Athenaeum  critic  calls  the  right  statement 
of  generic  difference  “Denner-\\k.e  portraiture.”  If  he 
can  find  anything  like  Denner  in  what  I have  advanced 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


ST 


as  the  utmost  perfection  of  landscape  art — the  recent 
works  of  Turner— he  is  welcome  to  his  discovery  and 
his  theory.  No ; Denner-like  portraiture  would  be  the 
endeavor  to  paint  the  separate  crystals  of  quartz  and  fel- 
spar in  the  granite,  and  the  separate  flakes  of  mica  in 
the  mica-slate, — an  attempt  just  as  far  removed  from 
what  I assert  to  be  great  art,  (the  bold  rendering  of  the 
generic  characters  of  form  in  both  rocks,)  as  modern 
sculpture  of  lace  and  button-holes  is  from  the  Elgin 
marbles.  Martin  has  attempted  this  Denner-like  por- 
traiture of  sea-foam  with  the  assistance  of  an  acre  of 
canvas — with  what  success,  I believe  the  critics  of  his 
last  year’s  Canute  had,  for  once,  sense  enough  to  decide. 

Again,  it  does  not  follow  that  because  such  accurate 
knowledge  is  necessary  to  the  painter,  that  it  should 
constitute  the  painter,  nor  that  such  knowledge  is  valu- 
able in  itself,  and  without  reference  to  high  ends.  Every 
kind  of  knowledge  may  be  sought  from  ignoble  motives, 
and  for  ignoble  ends ; and  in  those  who  so  possess  it,  it 
is  ignoble  knowledge ; while  the  very  same  knowledge 
is  in  another  mind  an  attainment  of  the  highest  dignity, 
and  conveying  the  greatest  blessing.  This  is  the  differ- 
ence between  the  mere  botanist’s  knowledge  of  plants, 
and  the  great  poet’s  or  painter’s  knowledge  of  them. 
The  one  notes  their  distinctions  for  the  sake  of  swell- 
ing his  herbarium,  the  other,  that  he  may  render  them 
vehicles  of  expression  and  emotion.  The  one  counts  the 
stamens,  and  affixes  a name,  and  is  content ; the  other 
observes  every  character  of  the  plant’s  color  and  form ; 
considering  each  of  its  attributes  as  an  element  of  ex- 
pression, he  seizes  on  its  lines  of  grace  or  energy, 
rigidity  or  repose;  notes  the  feebleness  or  the  vigor, 
the  serenity  or  tremulousness  of  its  hues ; observes  its 
local  habits,  its  love  or  fear  of  peculiar  places,  its 
nourishment  or  destruction  by  particular  influences ; he 
associates  it  in  his  mind  with  all  the  features  of  the 


38 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION . 


situations  it  inhabits,  and  the  ministering  agencies 
necessary  to  its  support.  Thenceforward  the  flower  is 
to  him  a living  creature,  with  histories  written  on  its 
leaves,  and  passions  breathing  in  its  motion.  Its  occur- 
rence in  his  picture  is  no  mere  point  of  color,  no  mean- 
ingless spark  of  light.  It  is  a voice  rising  from  the 
earth, — a new  chord  of  the  mind’s  music, — a necessary 
note  in  the  harmony  of  his  picture,  contributing  alike  to 
its  tenderness  and  its  dignity,  nor  less  to  its  loveliness 
than  its  truth. 

The  particularization  of  flowers  by  Shakspeare  and 
Shelley  affords  us  the  most  frequent  examples  of  the  ex- 
alted use  of  these  inferior  details.  It  is  true  that  the 
painter  has  not  the  same  power  of  expressing  the 
thoughts  with  which  his  symbols  are  connected ; he  is 
dependent  in  some  degree  on  the  knowledge  and  feeling 
of  the  spectator ; but,  by  the  destruction  of  such  details, 
his  foreground  is  not  rendered  more  intelligible  to  the 
ignorant,  although  it  ceases  to  have  interest  for  the  in- 
formed. It  is  no  excuse  for  illegible  writing  that  there 
are  persons  who  could  not  have  read  it  had  it  been 
plain. 

I repeat,  then,  generalization,  as  the  word  is  com- 
monly understood,  is  the  act  of  a vulgar,  incapable,  and 
unthinking  mind.  To  see  in  all  mountains  nothing  but 
similar  heaps  of  earth ; in  all  rocks,  nothing  but  similar 
concretions  of  solid  matter;  in  all  trees,  nothing  but 
similar  accumulations  of  leaves,  is  no  sign  of  high  feel- 
ing or  extended  thought.  The  more  we  know,  and  the 
more  we  feel,  the  more  we  separate ; we  separate  to  ob- 
tain a more  perfect  unity.  Stones,  in  the  thoughts  of 
the  peasant,  lie  as  they  do  on  his  field,  one  is  like  an- 
other, and  there  is  no  connection  between  any  of  them. 
The  geologist  distinguishes,  and  in  distinguishing  con- 
nects them.  Each  becomes  different  from  its  fellow, 
but  in  differing  from,  assumes  a relation  to  its  fellow 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


39 


they  are  no  more  each  the  repetition  of  the  other,— they 
are  parts  of  a system,  and  each  implies  and  is  connected 
with  the  existence  of  the  rest.  That  generalization  then 
is  right,  true,  and  noble,  which  is  based  on  the  knowl- 
edge of  the  distinctions  and  observance  of  the  relations 
of  individual  kinds.  That  generalization  is  wrong,  false, 
and  contemptible,  which  is  based  on  ignorance  of  the 
one,  and  disturbance  of  the  other.  It  is  indeed  no  gen- 
eralization, but  confusion  and  chaos ; it  is  the  general- 
ization of  a defeated  army  into  indistinguishable  im- 
potence— the  generalization  of  the  elements  of  a dead 
carcass  into  dust. 

Let  us,  then,  without  farther  notice  of  the  dogmata  of 
the  schools  of  art,  follow  forth  those  conclusions  to 
which  we  are  led  by  observance  of  the  laws  of  nature. 

I have  just  said  that  every  class  of  rock,  earth  and 
cloud,  must  be  known  by  the  painter,  with  geologic  and 
meteorologic  accuracy.*  Nor  is  this  merely  for  the  sake 
of  obtaining  the  character  of  these  minor  features  them- 
selves, but  more  especially  for  the  sake  of  reaching  that 
simple,  earnest,  and  consistent  character  which  is  visible 
in  the  whole  effect  of  every  natural  landscape.  Every 
geological  formation  has  features  entirely  peculiar  to 
itself ; definite  lines  of  fracture,  giving  rise  to  fixed  re- 
sultant forms  of  rock  and  earth ; peculiar  vegetable  prod- 

* Is  not  this — it  may  be  asked — demanding  more  from  him  than 
life  can  accomplish  ? Not  one  whit.  Nothing  more  than  knowledge 
of  external  characteristics  is  absolutely  required  ; and  even  if,  which 
were  more  desirable,  thorough  scientific  knowledge  had  to  be  at- 
tained, the  time  which  our  artists  spend  in  multiplying  crude  sketches, 
or  finishing  their  unintelligent  embryos  of  the  study,  would  render 
them  masters  of  every  science  that  modern  investigations  have  organ- 
ized, and  familiar  with  every  form  that  Nature  manifests.  Martin,  if 
the  time  which  he  must  have  spent  on  the  abortive  bubbles  of  his 
Canute  had  been  passed  in  working  on  the  seashore,  might  have 
learned  enough  to  enable  him  to  produce,  with  a few  strokes,  a pict- 
ure which  would  have  smote  like  the  sound  of  the  sea,  upon  men’s 
hearts  forever. 


40 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION 


nets,  among  which  still  farther  distinctions  are  wrought 
out  by  variations  of  climate  and  elevation.  From  such 
modifying  circumstances  arise  the  infinite  varieties  of 
the  orders  of  landscape,  of  which  each  one  shows  per- 
fect harmony  among  its  several  features,  and  possesses 
an  ideal  beauty  of  its  own ; a beauty  not  distinguished 
merely  by  such  peculiarities  as  are  wrought  on  the  hu- 
man form  by  change  of  climate,  but  by  generic  differ- 
ences the  most  marked  and  essential ; so  that  its  classes 
cannot  be  generalized  or  amalgamated  by  any  expedi- 
ents whatsoever.  The  level  marshes  and  rich  meadows 
of  the  tertiary,  the  rounded  swells  and  short  pastures  of 
the  chalk,  the  square-built  cliffs  and  cloven  dells  of  the 
lower  limestone,  the  soaring  peaks  and  ridgy  precipices 
of  the  primaries,  having  nothing  in  common  among 
them— -nothing  which  is  not  distinctive  and  incommu- 
nicable. Their  very  atmospheres  are  different — their 
clouds  are  different — their  humors  of  storm  and  sunshine 
are  different — their  flowers,  animals,  and  forests  are  dif- 
ferent. By  each  order  of  landscape — and  its  orders,  I 
repeat,  are  infinite  in  number,  corresponding  not  only 
to  the  several  species  of  rock,  but  to  the  particular  cir- 
cumstances of  the  rocks’  deposition  or  after  treatment, 
and  to  the  incalculable  varieties  of  climate,  aspect,  and 
human  interference  : — by  each  order  of  landscape,  I say, 
peculiar  lessons  are  intended  to  be  taught,  and  distinct 
pleasures  to  be  conveyed ; and  it  is  as  utterly  futile  to 
talk  of  generalizing  their  impressions  into  an  ideal 
landscape,  as  to  talk  of  amalgamating  all  nourishment 
into  one  ideal  food,  gathering  all  music  into  one  ideal 
movement,  or  confounding  all  thought  into  one  ideal 
idea. 

There  is,  however,  such  a thing  as  composition  of  dif- 
ferent orders  of  landscape,  though  there  can  be  no  gen- 
eralization of  them.  Nature  herself  perpetually  brings 
together  elements  of  various  expression.  Her  barren 


PREFACE  TO  TEE  SECOND  EDITION. 


41 


rocks  stoop  through  wooded  promontories  to  the  plain ; 
and  the  wreaths  of  the  vine  show  through  their  green 
shadows  the  wan  light  of  unperishing  snow. 

The  painter,  therefore,  has  the  choice  of  either  work- 
ing out  the  isolated  character  of  some  one  distinct  class 
of  scene,  or  of  bringing  together  a multitude  of  different 
elements,  which  may  adorn  each  other  by  contrast. 

r I believe  that  the  simple  and  uncombined  landscape, 
if  wrought  out  with  due  attention  to  the  ideal  beauty  of 
the  features  it  includes,  will  always  be  the  most  power- 
ful in  its  appeal  to  the  heart.  Contrast  increases  the 
splendor  of  beauty,  but  it  disturbs  its  influence ; it  adds 
to  its  attractiveness,  but  diminishes  its  power.  On  this 
subject  I shall  have  much  to  say  hereafter;  at  present  I 
merely  wish  to  suggest  the  possibility,  that  the  single- 
minded  painter,  who  is  working  out  on  broad  and  simple 
principles,  a piece  of  unbroken,  harmonious  landscape 
character,  may  be  reaching  an  end  in  art  quite  as  high 
as  the  more  ambitious  student  who  is  always  “ Avithin 
five  minutes’  walk  of  everywhere,”  making  the  ends  of 
the  earth  contribute  to  his  pictorial  guazzetto ; * and 
the  certainty,  that  unless  the  composition  of  the  latter 
be  regulated  by  severe  judgment,  and  its  members  con- 
nected by  natural  links,  it  must  become  more  contempt- 
ible in  its  motley,  than  an  honest  study  of  road-side 
weeds. 

Let  me,  at  the  risk  of  tediously  repeating  what  is  uni- 
versally known,  refer  to  the  common  principles  of  his- 
torical  composition,  in  order  that  I may  show  their  ap- 
plication to  that  of  landscape.  The  merest  tyro  in  art 
knows  that  every  figure  which  is  unnecessary  to  his  pict- 
ure, is  an  encumbrance  to  it,  and  that  every  figure  which 

* “ A green  field  is  a sight  which  makes  us  pardon 
The  absence  of  that  more  sublime  construction 
Which  mixes  up  vines,  olive,  precipices, 

Glaciers,  volcanoes,  oranges,  and  ices.” — Don  Juan. 


42 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION . 


does  not  sympathize  with  the  action,  interrupts  it.  H© 
that  gathereth  not  with  me,  scattereth, — is,  or  ought  to 
be,  the  ruling  principle  of  his  plan : and  the  power  and 
grandeur  of  his  result  will  be  exactly  proportioned  to 
the  unity  of  feeling  manifested  in  its  several  parts,  and 
to  the  propriety  and  simplicity  of  the  relations  in  which 
they  stand  to  each  other. 

All  this  is  equally  applicable  to  the  materials  of  in- 
animate nature.  Impressiveness  is  destroyed  by  a mul- 
titude of  contradictory  facts,  and  the  accumulation, 
which  is  not  harmonious,  is  discordant.  He  who  en- 
deavors to  unite  simplicity  with  magnificence,  to  guide 
from  solitude  to  festivity,  and  to  contrast  melancholy 
with  mirth,  must  end  by  the  production  of  confused  in- 
anity. There  is  a peculiar  spirit  possessed  by  every 
kind  of  scene;  and  although  a point  of  contrast  may 
sometimes  enhance  and  exhibit  this  particular  feeling 
more  intensely,  it  must  be  only  a point,  not  an  equalized 
opposition.  Every  introduction  of  new  and  different 
feeling  weakens  the  force  of  what  has  already  been  im- 
pressed, and  the  mingling  of  all  emotions  must  conclude 
in  apathy,  as  the  mingling  of  all  colors  in  white. 

Let  us  test  by  these  simple  rules  one  of  the  “ ideal  ” 
landscape  compositions  of  Claude,  that  known  to  the 
Italians  as  “ II  Mulino.” 

The  foreground  is  a piece  of  very  lovely  and  perfect 
forest  scenery,  with  a dance  of  peasants  by  a brookside  ; 
quite  enough  subject  to  form,  in  the  hands  of  a master, 
an  impressive  and  complete  picture.  On  the  other  side 
of  the  brook,  however,  we  have  a piece  of  pastoral  life,  a 
man  with  some  bulls  and  goats  tumbling  headforemost 
into  the  water,  owing  to  some  sudden  paralytic  affection 
of  all  their  legs.  Even  this  group  is  one  too  many ; the 
shepherd  had  no  business  to  drive  his  flock  so  near  the 
dancers,  and  the  dancers  will  certainly  frighten  the  cattle. 
But  when  we  look  farther  into  the  picture,  our  feelings 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


43 


receive  a sudden  and  violent  shock,  by  the  unexpected 
appearance,  amidst  things  pastoral  and  musical,  of  the 
military:  a number  of  Boman  soldiers  riding  in  on 
hobby-horses,  with  a leader  on  foot,  apparently  encour- 
aging them  to  make  an  immediate  and  decisive  charge 
on  the  musicians.  Beyond  the  soldiers  is  a circular 
temple,  in  exceedingly  bad  repair,  and  close  beside  it, 
built  against  its  very  walls,  a neat  water-mill  in  full  work. 
By  the  mill  flows  a large  river,  with  a weir  all  across  it. 
The  weir  has  not  been  made  for  the  mill,  (for  that  re- 
ceives its  water  from  the  hills  by  a trough  carried  over 
the  temple,)  but  it  is  particularly  ugly  and  monotonous 
in  its  line  of  fall,  and  the  water  below  forms  a dead-look- 
ing pond,  on  which  some  people  are  fishing  in  punts. 
The  banks  of  this  river  resemble  in  contour  the  later 
geological  formations  around  London,  constituted  chiefly 
of  broken  pots  and  oyster-shells.  At  an  inconvenient 
distance  from  the  water-side  stands  a city,  composed  of 
twenty -five  round  towers  and  a pyramid.  Beyond  the 
city  is  a handsome  bridge ; beyond  the  bridge,  part  of 
the  Campagna,  with  fragments  of  aqueducts;  beyond 
the  Campagna,  the  chain  of  the  Alps ; on  the  left,  the 
cascades  of  Tivoli. 

This  is,  I believe,  a fair  example  of  what  is  commonly 
called  an  “ideal  landscape,”  i.e.,  a group  of  the  artist’s 
studies  from  nature,  individually  spoiled,  selected  with 
such  opposition  of  character  as  may  insure  their  neutral- 
izing each  other’s  effect,  and  united  with  sufficient  un- 
naturalness and  violence  of  association  to  insure  their 
producing  a general  sensation  of  the  impossible.  Let  us 
analyze  the  separate  subjects  a little  in  this  ideal  work 
of  Claude’s. 

Perhaps  there  is  no  more  impressive  scene  on  earth 
than  the  solitary  extent  of  the  Campagna  of  Borne  under 
evening  light.  Let  the  reader  imagine  himself  for  a 
moment  withdrawn  from  the  sounds  and  motion  of  the 


44 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


living  world,  and  sent  forth  alone  into  this  wild  and 
wasted  plain.  The  earth  yields  and  crumbles  beneath 
his  foot,  tread  he  never  so  lightly,  for  its  substance  is 
white,  hollow,  and  carious,  like  the  dusty  wreck  of  the 
bones  of  men.*  The  long  knotted  grass  waves  and  tosses 
feebly  in  the  evening  wind,  and  the  shadows  of  its  motion 
shake  feverishly  along  the  banks  of  ruin  that  lift  them- 
selves to  the  sunlight.  Hillocks  of  mouldering  earth 
heave  around  him,  as  if  the  dead  beneath  were  struggling 
in  their  sleep;  scattered  blocks  of  black  stone,  four- 
square, remnants  of  mighty  edifices,  not  one  left  upon 
another,  lie  upon  them  to  keep  them  down.  A dull 
purple,  poisonous  haze  stretches  level  along  the  desert, 
veiling  its  spectral  wrecks  of  massy  ruins,  on  whose  rents 
the  red  light  rests  like  dying  fire  on  defiled  altars.  The 
blue  ridge  of  the  Alban  mount  lifts  itself  against  a 
solemn  space  of  green,  clear,  quiet  sky.  Watch-towers 
of  dark  clouds  stand  steadfastly  along  the  promontories 
of  the  Apennines.  From  the  plain  to  the  mountains, 
the  shattered  aqueducts,  pier  beyond  pier,  melt  into  the 
darkness,  like  shadowy  and  countless  troops  of  funeral 
mourners,  passing  from  a nation’s  grave. 

Let  us,  with  Claude,  make  a few  “ ideal  ” alterations  in 
this  landscape.  First,  we  will  reduce  the  multitudinous 
precipices  of  the  Apennines  to  four  sugar-loaves.  Sec- 
ondly, we  will  remove  the  Alban  mount,  and  put  a large 
dust-heap  in  its  stead.  Next,  we  will  knock  down  the 
greater  part  of  the  aqueducts,  and  leave  only  an  arch  or 
two,  that  their  infinity  of  length  may  no  longer  be  pain- 
ful from  its  monotony.  For  the  purple  mist  and  declin- 
ing sun  we  will  substitute  a bright  blue  sky,  with  round 
white  clouds.  Finally,  we  will  get  rid  of  the  unpleasant 
ruins  in  the  foreground ; we  will  plant  some  handsome 

* The  vegetable  soil  of  the  Campagna  is  chiefly  formed  by  decom- 
posed lavas,  and  under  it  lies  a bed  of  white  pumice,  exactly  resem- 
bling remnants  of  bones. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


45 


trees  therein,  we  will  send  for  some  fiddlers,  and  get  up 
a dance,  and  a picnic  party. 

It  will  be  found,  throughout  the  picture,  that  the 
same  species  of  improvement  is  made  on  the  materials 
which  Claude  had  ready  to  his  hand.  The  descending 
slopes  of  the  city  of  Home,  towards  the  pyramid  of  Caius 
Cestius,  supply  not  only  lines  of  the  most  exquisite 
variety  and  beauty,  but  matter  for  contemplation  and 
reflection  in  every  fragment  of  their  buildings.  This 
passage  has  been  idealized  by  Claude  into  a set  of  similar 
round  towers,  respecting  which  no  idea  can  be  formed 
but  that  they  are  uninhabitable,  and  to  which  no  interest 
can  be  attached,  beyond  the  difficulty  of  conjecturing 
what  they  could  have  been  built  for.  The  ruins  of  the 
temple  are  rendered  unimpressive  by  the  juxtaposition 
of  the  water-mill,  and  inexplicable  by  the  introduction  of 
the  Homan  soldiers.  The  glide  of  the  muddy  streams  of 
the  melancholy  Tiber  and  Anio  through  the  Campagna 
is  impressive  in  itself,  but  altogether  ceases  to  be  so, 
when  we  disturb  their  stillness  of  motion  by  a weir,  adorn 
their  neglected  flow  with  a handsome  bridge,  and  cover 
their  solitary  surface  with  punts,  nets,  and  fishermen. 

It  cannot,  I think,  be  expected,  that  landscapes  like 
this  should  have  any  effect  on  the  human  heart,  except 
to  harden  or  to  degrade  it ; to  lead  it  from  the  love  of 
what  is  simple,  earnest,  and  pure,  to  what  is  as  sophisti- 
cated and  corrupt  in  arrangement  as  erring  and  imper- 
fect in  detail.  So  long  as  such  works  are  held  up  for 
imitation,  landscape  painting  must  be  a manufacture,  its 
productions  must  be  toys,  and  its  patrons  must  be  chil- 
dren. 

My  purpose  then,  in  the  present  work,  is  to  demon- 
strate the  utter  falseness  both  of  the  facts  and  principles ; 
the  imperfection  of  material,  and  error  of  arrangement, 
on  which  works  such  as  these  are  based ; and  to  insist 
on  the  necessity,  as  well  as  the  dignity,  of  an  earnest, 


4G 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION , 


faithful,  loving,  study  of  nature  as  she  is,  rejecting  with 
abhorrence  all  that  man  has  done  to  alter  and  modify 
her.  And  the  praise  which,  in  this  first  portion  of  the 
work,  is  given  to  many  English  artists,  would  be  justifi- 
able on  this  ground  only,  that  although  frequently  with 
little  power  and  desultory  effort,  they  have  yet,  in  an 
honest  and  good  heart,  received  the  word  of  God  from 
clouds,  and  leaves,  and  waves,  and  kept  it,*  and  en- 
deavored in  humility  to  render  to  the  world  that  purity 
of  impression  which  can  alone  render  the  result  of  art  an 
instrument  of  good,  or  its  labor  deserving  of  gratitude. 

* The  feelings  of  Constable  with  respect  to  his  art  might  he  almost 
a model  for  the  young  student,  were  it  not  that  they  err  a little  on  the 
other  side,  and  are  perhaps  in  need  of  chastening  and  guiding  from 
the  works  of  his  fellow-men.  We  should  use  pictures  not  as  authori- 
ties, hut  as  comments  on  nature,  just  as  we  use  divines,  not  as  authori- 
ties, but  as  comments  on  the  Bible.  Constable,  in  his  dread  of  saint- 
worsliip,  excommunicates  himself  from  all  benefit  of  the  Church,  and 
deprives  himself  of  much  instruction  from  the  Scripture  to  which  he 
holds,  because  he  will  not  accept  aid  in  the  reading  of  it  from  the 
learning  of  other  men.  Sir  George  Beaumont,  on  the  contrary,  fur- 
nishes, in  the  anecdotes  given  of  him  in  Constable’s  life,  a melancholy 
instance  of  the  degradation  into  wdiich  the  human  mind  may  fall,  when 
it  suffers  human  works  to  interfere  between  it  and  its  Master.  The 
recommending  the  color  of  an  old  Cremona  fiddle  for  the  prevailing 
tone  of  everything,  and  the  vapid  inquiry  of  the  conventionalist, 
“ Where  do  you  put  your  brown  tree  ? **  show  a prostration  of  intellect 
so  laughable  and  lamentable  that  they  are  at  once,  on  all,  and  to  all, 
students  of  the  gallery,  a satire  and  a warning.  Art  so  followed  is  the 
most  servile  indolence  in  which  life  can  be  wasted.  There  are  then 
two  dangerous  extremes  to  be  shunned — forgetfulness  of  the  Scripture, 
and  scorn  of  the  divine — slavery  on  the  one  hand,  free-thinking  on  the 
other.  The  mean  is  nearly  as  difficult  to  determine  or  keep  in  art  as 
in  religion,  but  the  great  danger  is  on  the  side  of  superstition.  He 
who  walks  humbly  with  Mature  will  seldom  be  in  danger  of  losing  sight 
of  Art.  He  will  commonly  find  in  all  that  is  truly  great  of  man’s 
works,  something  of  their  original,  for  which  he  will  regard  them  with 
gratitude,  and  sometimes  follow  them  with  respect ; while  he  who 
takes  Art  for  his  authority  may  entirely  lose  sight  of  all  that  it  inter- 
prets, and  sink  at  once  into  the  sin  of  an  idolater,  and  the  degradation 
of  a slave. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


47 


If,  however,  I shall  have  frequent  occasion  to  insist  on 
the  necessity  of  this  heartfelt  love  of,  and  unqualified 
submission  to,  the  teaching*  of  nature,  it  will  be  no  less 
incumbent  upon  me  to  reprobate  the  careless  rendering 
of  casual  impression,  and  the  mechanical  copyism  of  un- 
important subject,  which  are  too  frequently  visible  in 
our  modern  school*  Their  lightness  and  desultoriness 
of  intention,  their  meaningless  multiplication  of  unstud- 
ied composition,  and  their  want  of  definiteness  and  lofti- 

* I should  have  insisted  more  on  this  fault  (for  it  is  a fatal  one)  in 
the  following  Essay,  but  the  cause  of  it  rests  rather  with  the  public 
than  with  the  artist,  and  in  the  necessities  of  the  public  as  much  as  in 
their  will.  Such  pictures  as  artists  themselves  would  wish  to  paint, 
could  not  be  executed  under  very  high  prices  ; and  it  must  always  be 
easier,  in  the  present  state  of  society,  to  find  ten  purchasers  of  ten- 
guinea  sketches,  than  one  purchaser  for  a hundred-guinea  picture. 
Still,  I have  been  often  both  surprised  and  grieved  to  see  that  any 
effort  on  the  part  of  our  artists  to  rise  above  manufacture — any  strug- 
gle to  something  like  completed  conception — was  left  by  the  public  to 
be  its  own  reward.  In  the  water-color  exhibition  of  last  year  there 
was  a noble  work  of  David  Cox’s,  ideal  in  the  right  sense — a forest  hol- 
low with  a few  sheep  crushing  down  through  its  deep  fern,  and  a sol- 
emn opening  of  evening  sky  above  its  dark  masses  of  distance.  It  was 
worth  all  his  little  bits  on  the  walls  put  together.  Yet  the  public 
picked  up  ail  the  little  bits — blots  and  splashes,  ducks,  chickweed, 
ears  of  corn — all  that  was  clever  and  petite  ; and  the  real  picture — the 
full  development  of  the  artist’s  mind — was  left  on  liis  hands.  How 
can  I,  or  anyone  else,  with  a conscience,  advise  him  after  this  to  aim 
at  anything  more  than  may  be  struck  out  by  the  cleverness  of  a quar- 
ter of  an  hour.  Cattermole,  I believe,  is  earthed  and  shackled  in  the 
same  manner.  He  began  his  career  with  finished  and  studied  pictures, 
which,  I believe,  never  paid  him — he  now  prostitutes  his  fine  talent  to 
the  superficialness  of  public  taste,  and  blots  his  way  to  emolument  and 
oblivion.  There  is  commonly,  however,  fault  on  both  sides ; in  the 
artist  for  exhibiting  his  dexterity  by  mountebank  tricks  of  the  brush, 
until  chaste  finish,  requiring  ten  times  the  knowledge  and  labor,  ap- 
pears insipid  to  the  diseased  taste  which  he  has  himself  formed  in  his 
patrons,  as  the  roaring  and  ranting  of  a common  actor  will  oftentimes 
render  apparently  vapid  the  finished  touches  of  perfect  nature  ; and  in 
the  public,  for  taking  less  real  pains  to  become  acquainted  with,  and 
discriminate,  the  various  powers  of  a great  artist,  than  they  would  to 
estimate  the  excellence  of  a cook  or  develop  the  dexterity  of  a dancer. 


48 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION 


ness  of  aim,  bring*  discredit  on  their  whole  system  of 
study,  and  encourage  in  the  critic  the  unhappy  preju- 
dice that  the  field  and  the  hiil-side  are  less  fit  places  of 
study  than  the  gallery  and  the  garret.  Not  every  cas- 
ual idea  caught  from  the  flight  of  a shower  or  the  fall  of 
a sunbeam,  not  every  glowing  fragment  of  harvest  light, 
nor  every  flickering  dream  of  copse  wood  coolness,  is  to 
be  given  to  the  world  as  it  came,  unconsidered,  incom- 
plete, and  forgotten  by  the  artist  as  soon  as  it  has  left 
his  easel.  That  only  should  be  considered  a picture,  in 
which  the  spirit,  (not  the  materials,  observe,)  but  the  ani- 
mating emotion  of  many  such  studies  is  concentrated, 
and  exhibited  by  the  aid  of  long-studied,  painfully- 
chosen  forms ; idealized  in  the  right  sense  of  the  word, 
not  by  audacious  liberty  of  that  faculty  of  degrading 
God’s  works  which  man  calls  his  “ imagination,”  but  by 
perfect  assertion  of  entire  knowledge  of  every  part  and 
character  and  function  of  the  object,  and  in  which  the 
details  are  completed  to  the  last  line  compatible  with 
the  dignity  and  simplicity  of  the  whole,  wrought  out 
with  that  noblest  industry  which  concentrates  profusion 
into  point,  and  transforms  accumulation  into  structure ; 
neither  must  this  labor  be  bestowed  on  every  subject 
which  appears  to  afford  a capability  of  good,  but  on 
chosen  subjects  in  which  nature  has  prepared  to  the  ar- 
tist’s hand  the  purest  sources  of  the  impression  he  would 
convey.  These  may  be  humble  in  their  order,  but  they 
must  be  perfect  of  their  kind.  There  is  a perfection  of 
the  hedgerow  and  cottage,  as  well  as  of  the  forest  and 
the  palace,  and  more  ideality  in  a great  artist’s  selection 
and  treatment  of  roadside  weeds  and  brook-worn  peb- 
bles, than  in  all  the  struggling  caricature  of  the  meaner 
mind  which  heaps  its  foreground  with  colossal  columns, 
and  heaves  impossible  mountains  into  the  encumbered 
sky.  Finally,  these  chosen  subjects  must  not  be  in  any 
way  repetitions  of  one  another,  but  each  founded  on  a 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


49 


new  idea,  and  developing  a totally  distinct  train  of 
thought ; so  that  the  work  of  the  artist’s  life  should 
form  a consistent  series  of  essays,  rising  through  the 
scale  of  creation  from  the  humblest  scenery  to  the  most 
exalted ; each  picture  being  a necessary  link  in  the 
chain,  based  on  what  preceded,  introducing  to  what  is  to 
follow,  and  all,  in  their  lovely  system,  exhibiting  and 
drawing  closer  the  bonds  of  nature  to  the  human  heart. 

Since,  then,  I shall  have  to  reprobate  the  absence  of 
study  in  the  moderns  nearly  as  much  as  its  false  direc- 
tion in  the  ancients,  my  task  will  naturally  divide  itself 
into  three  portions.  In  the  first,  I shall  endeavor  to  in- 
vestigate and  arrange  the  facts  of  nature  with  scientific 
accuracy ; showing  as  I proceed,  by  what  total  neglect 
of  the  very  first  base  and  groundwork  of  their  art  the 
idealities  of  some  among  the  old  masters  are  produced. 
This  foundation  once  securely  laid,  I shall  proceed,  in 
the  second  portion  of  the  work,  to  analyze  and  demon- 
strate the  nature  of  the  emotions  of  the  Beautiful  and 
Sublime ; to  examine  the  particular  characters  of  every 
kind  of  scenery,  and  to  bring  to  light,  as  far  as  may  be 
in  my  power,  that  faultless,  ceaseless,  inconceivable,  in- 
exhaustible loveliness,  which  God  has  stamped  upon  all 
things,  if  man  will  only  receive  them  as  He  gives  them. 
Finally,  I shall  endeavor  to  trace  the  operation  of  all 
this  on  the  hearts  and  minds  of  men ; to  exhibit  the 
moral  function  and  end  of  art,  to  prove  the  share  which 
it  ought  to  have  in  the  thoughts,  and  influence  on  the 
lives  of  all  of  us ; to  attach  to  the  artist  the  responsibil- 
ity of  a preacher,  and  to  kindle  in  the  general  mind  that 
regard  which  such  an  office  must  demand. 

It  must  be  evident  that  the  first  portion  of  this  task, 
which  is  all  that  I have  yet  been  enabled  to  offer  to  the 
reader,  cannot  but  be  the  least  interesting  and  the  most 
laborious,  especially  because  it  is  necessary  that  it 
should  be  executed  without  reference  to  any  principles 
& 


50 


PBEFAGE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


of  beauty  or  influences  of  emotion.  It  is  the  hard, 
straightforward  classification  of  material  things,  not  the 
study  of  thought  or  passion ; and  therefore  let  me  not  be 
accused  of  the  feelings  which  I choose  to  repress.  The 
consideration  of  the  high  qualities  of  art  must  not  be  in- 
terrupted by  the  work  of  the  hammer  and  the  eudiometer. 

Again,  I would  request  that  the  frequent  passages  of 
reference  to  the  great  masters  of  the  Italian  school  may 
not  be  looked  upon  as  mere  modes  of  conventional  ex- 
pression. I think  there  is  enough  in  the  following 
pages  to  prove  that  I am  not  likely  to  be  carried  away 
by  the  celebrity  of  a name ; and  therefore  that  the  de- 
voted love  which  I profess  for  the  works  of  the  great 
historical  and  sacred  painters  is  sincere  and  well- 
grounded.  And  indeed  every  principle  of  art  which  I 
may  advocate,  I shall  be  able  to  illustrate  by  reference 
to  the  works  of  men  universally  allowed  to  be  the  mas- 
ters of  masters ; and  the  public,  so  long  as  my  teaching 
leads  them  to  higher  understanding  and  love  of  the 
works  of  Buonaroti,  Leonardo,  Raffaelle,  Titian,  and 
Cagliari,  may  surely  concede  to  me  without  fear,  the 
right  of  striking  such  blows  as  I may  deem  necessary  to 
the  establishment  of  my  principles,  at  Gasper  Poussin, 
or  Vandevelde. 

Indeed,  I believe  there  is  nearly  as  much  occasion,  at 
the  present  day,  for  advocacy  of  Michael  Angelo  against 
the  pettiness  of  the  moderns,  as  there  is  for  support  of 
Turner  against  the  conventionalities  of  the  ancients. 
For,  though  the  names  of  the  fathers  of  sacred  art  are  on 
all  our  lips,  our  faith  in  them  is  much  like  that  of  the 
great  world  in  its  religion — nominal,  but  dead.  In  vain 
our  lecturers  sound  the  name  of  Baffaelle  in  the  ears  of 
their  pupils,  while  their  own  works  are  visibly  at  vari- 
ance with  every  principle  deducible  from  his.  In  vain 
is  the  young  student  compelled  to  produce  a certain 
number  of  school  copies  of  Michael  Angelo,  when  his 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


51 


bread  must  depend  on  the  number  of  gewgaws  he  can 
crowd  into  his  canvas.  And  I could  with  as  much  zeal 
exert  myself  against  the  modern  system  of  English  his- 
torical art,  as  I have  in  favor  of  our  school  of  landscape, 
but  that  it  is  an  ungrateful  and  painful  task  to  attack 
the  works  of  living  painters,  struggling  with  adverse 
circumstances  of  every  kind,  and  especially  with  the 
false  taste  of  a nation  which  regards  matters  of  art 
either  with  the  ticklishness  of  an  infant,  or  the  stolidity 
of  a Megatherium. 

I have  been  accused,  in  the  execution  of  this  first  por- 
tion of  my  work,  of  irreverent  and  scurrile  expression 
towards  the  works  which  I have  depreciated.  Possibly  I 
may  have  been  in  some  degree  infected  by  reading  those 
criticisms  of  our  periodicals,  which  consist  of  nothing 
else ; but  I believe  in  general  that  my  words  will  be 
found  to  have  sufficient  truth  in  them  to  excuse  their 
familiarity ; and  that  no  other  weapons  could  have  been 
used  to  pierce  the  superstitious  prejudice  with  which 
the  works  of  certain  painters  are  shielded  from  the  attacks 
of  reason.  My  answer  is  that  given  long  ago  to  a similar 
complaint,  uttered  under  the  same  circumstances  by  the 
foiled  Sophist  : — (“  S’  ecrnv  0 av6pu>7ro<?  ’ d>s  aTratSevTo?  ns, 
os  oviui  <f> avXa  6vo/xa to.  oj/o/xa£eir  roX/xa  iv  ae/xvio  yrpay/xari.) 
Toioutos  ns,  w Imrca,  ouSev  aXXo  (£povn£wr  rj  to  aX^cs.” 

It  is  with  more  surprise  that  I have  heard  myself  ac- 
cused of  thoughtless  severity  with  respect  to  the  works 
of  contemporary  painters,  for  I fully  believe  that  when- 
ever I attack  them,  I give  myself  far  more  pain  than  I 
can  possibly  inflict ; and,  in  many  instances,  I have  with- 
held reprobation  which  I considered  necessary  to  the 
full  understanding  of  my  work,  in  the  fear  of  grieving  or 
injuring  men  of  whose  feelings  and  circumstances  I was 
ignorant.  Indeed,  the  apparently  false  and  exaggerated 
bias  of  the  whole  book  in  favor  of  modern  art,  is  in 
great  degree  dependent  on  my  withholding  the  animad- 


52 


PREFACE  TO  THE  SECOND  EDITION. 


versions  which  would  have  given  it  balance,  and  keeping 
silence  where  I cannot  praise.  But  I had  rather  be  a 
year  or  two  longer  in  effecting  my  purposes,  than  reach 
them  by  trampling  on  men’s  hearts  and  hearths  ? and  I 
have  permitted  myself  to  express  unfavorable  opinions 
only  where  the  popularity  and  favor  of  the  artist  are  so 
great  as  to  render  the  opinion  of  an  individual  a matter 
of  indifference  to  him. 

And  now — but  one  word  more.  For  many  a year  we 
have  heard  nothing  with  respect  to  the  works  of  Turner 
but  accusations  of  their  want  of  truth.  To  every  obser- 
vation on  their  power,  sublimity,  or  beauty,  there  has 
been  but  one  reply : They  are  not  like  nature.  I there- 
fore took  my-opponents  on  their  own  ground,  and  demon- 
strated, by  thorough  investigation  of  actual  facts,  that 
Turner  is  like  nature,  and  paints  more  of  nature  than  any 
man  who  ever  lived.  I expected  this  proposition  (the 
foundation  of  all  my  future  efforts)  would  have  been  dis- 
puted with  desperate  struggles,  and  that  I should  have 
had  to  fight  my  way  to  my  position  inch  by  inch.  Not 
at  all.  My  opponents  yield  me  the  field  at  once.  One 
(the  writer  for  the  Athenaeum)  has  no  other  resource  than 
the  assertion,  that  “ he  disapproves  the  natural  style  in 
painting.  If  people  want  to  see  nature,  let  them  go  and 
look  at  herself.  Why  should  they  see  her  at  second-hand 
on  a piece  of  canvas  ? ” The  other,  (Blackwood,)  still 
more  utterly  discomfited,  is  reduced  to  a still  more  re- 
markable line  of  defence.  “ It  is  not,”  he  says,  “ what 
things  in  all  respects  really  are,  but  how  they  are  con- 
vertible by  the  mind  into  what  they  are  not,  that  we  have 
to  consider.”  (October,  1843,  p.  485.)  I leave  therefore 
the  reader  to  choose  whether,  with  Blackwood  and  his 
fellows,  he  will  proceed  to  consider  how  things  are  con- 
vertible by  the  mind  into  what  they  are  not,  or  whether, 
with  me,  he  will  undergo  the  harder,  but  perhaps  on  the 
whole  more  useful,  labor  of  ascertaining — What  they  are. 


PREFACE  TO  THE  THIRD  EDITION. 


It  is  with  much  regret,  and  partly  against  my  own 
judgment,  that  I republish  the  following  chapters  in 
their  present  form.  The  particular  circumstances  (stated 
in  the  first  preface)  under  which  they  were  origin- 
ally written,  have  rendered  them  so  unfit  for  the  posi- 
tion they  now  hold  as  introductory  to  a serious  exami- 
nation of  the  general  functions  of  art,  that  I should  have 
wished  first  to  complete  the  succeeding  portions  of  the 
essay,  and  then  to  write  another  introduction  of  more 
fitting  character.  But  as  it  may  be  long  before  I am 
able  to  do  this,  and  as  I believe  what  I have  already 
written  may  still  be  of  some  limited  and  partial  service, 
I have  suffered  it  to  reappear,  trusting  to  the  kindness 
of  the  reader  to  look  to  its  intention  rather  than  its 
temper,  and  forgive  its  inconsideration  in  its  earnestness. 

Thinking  it  of  too  little  substance  to  bear  mending’, 
wherever  I have  found  a passage  which  I thought  re- 
quired modification  or  explanation,  I have  cut  it  out ; 
what  I have  left,  however  imperfect,  cannot  I think  be 
dangerously  misunderstood:  something  I have  added, 
not  under  the  idea  of  rendering  the  work  in  any  wise 
systematic  or  complete,  but  to  supply  gross  omissions, 
answer  inevitable  objections,  and  give  some  substance 
to  passages  of  mere  declamation. 

Whatever  inadequacy  or  error  there  may  be,  through- 
out, in  materials  or  modes  of  demonstration,  I have  no 
doubt  of  the  truth  and  necessity  of  the  main  result ; and 
though  the  reader  may,  perhaps,  find  me  frequently  here- 
after showing  other  and  better  grounds  for  what  is  here 


54 


PREFACE  TO  THE  THIRD  EDIT l OH. 


affirmed,  yet  the  point  and  bearing  of  the  book,  its  deter- 
mined depreciation  of  Claude,  Salvator,  Gaspar,  and  Ca- 
naletto, and  its  equally  determined  support  of  Turner  as 
the  greatest  of  all  landscape  painters,  and  of  Turner’s 
recent  works  as  his  finest,  are  good  and  right ; and  if  the 
prevalence  throughout  of  attack  and  eulogium  be  found 
irksome  or  offensive,  let  it  be  remembered  that  my  object 
thus  far  has  not  been  either  the  establishment  or  the 
teaching  of  any  principles  of  art,  but  the  vindication, 
most  necessary  to  the  prosperity  of  our  present  schools, 
of  the  uncomprehended  rank  of  their  greatest  artist,  and 
the  diminution,  equally  necessary  as  I think  to  the  pros- 
perity of  our  schools,  of  the  unadvised  admiration  of  the 
landscape  of  the  seventeenth  century.  For  I believe 
it  to  be  almost  impossible  to  state  in  terms  sufficiently 
serious  and  severe  the  depth  a,nd  extent  of  the  evil  which 
has  resulted  (and  that  not  in  art  alone,  but  in  all  other 
matters  with  which  the  contemplative  faculties  are  con- 
cerned) from  the  works  of  those  elder  men.  On  the  con- 
tinent all  landscape  art  has  been  utterly  annihilated  by 
them,  and  with  it  all  sense  of  the  power  of  nature.  We 
in  England  have  only  done  better  because  our  artists 
have  had  strength  of  mind  enough  to  form  a school  with- 
drawn from  their  influence. 

These  points  are  somewhat  farther  developed  in  the 
general  sketch  of  ancient  and  modern  landscape,  which  I 
have  added  to  the  first  section  of  the  second  part.  Some 
important  additions  have  also  been  made  to  the  chapters 
on  the  painting  of  sea.  Throughout  the  rest  of  the  text, 
though  something  is  withdrawn,  little  is  changed ; and 
the  reader  may  rest  assured  that  if  I were  now  to  bestow 
on  this  feeble  essay  the  careful  revision  which  it  much 
needs,  but  little  deserves,  it  would  not  be  to  alter  its 
tendencies,  or  modify  its  conclusions,  but  to  prevent  in- 
dignation from  appearing  virulence  on  the  one  side,  and 
enthusiasm  partisanship  on  the  other. 


PREFACE  TO  NEW  EDITION  (1873). 


I have  been  lately  so  often  asked  by  friends  on  whose 
judgment  I can  rely,  to  permit  the  publication  of  another 
edition  of  “ Modern  Painters  ” in  its  original  form,  that  I 
have  at  last  yielded,  though  with  some  violence  to  my 
own  feelings ; for  many  parts  of  the  first  and  second  vol- 
umes are  written  in  a narrow  enthusiasm,  and  the  sub- 
stance of  their  metaphysical  and  religious  speculation 
is  only  justifiable  on  the  ground  of  its  absolute  honesty. 
Of  the  third,  fourth,  and  fifth  volumes  I indeed  mean 
eventually  to  rearrange  what  I think  of  permanent  in- 
terest, for  the  complete  edition  of  my  works,  but  with 
fewer  and  less  elaborate  illustrations : nor  have  I any  se- 
rious grounds  for  refusing  to  allow  the  book  once  more 
to  appear  in  the  irregular  form  which  it  took  as  it  was 
written,  since  of  the  art-teaching  and  landscape  descrip- 
tion it  contains  I have  little  to  retrench,  and  nothing  to 
retract. 

This  final  edition  must,  however,  be  limited  to  a thou- 
sand copies,  for  some  of  the  more  delicate  plates  are  al- 
ready worn,  that  of  the  Mill  Stream  in  the  fifth  volume, 
and  of  the  Loire  Side  very  injuriously ; while  that  of  the 
Shores  of  Wharfe  had  to  be  retouched  by  an  engraver 
after  the  removal  of  the  mezzotint  for  reprinting.  But 
Mr.  Armytage’s,  Mr.  Cousen’s,  and  Mr.  Cuffs  magnifi- 
cent plates  are  still  in  good  state,  and  my  own  etchings, 
though  injured,  are  still  good  enough  to  answer  their 
purpose. 


SYNOPSIS  OF  CONTENTS. 


PART  I. 

OF  GENERAL  PRINCIPLES. 


SECTION  L 

OF  THE  NATURE  OF  THE  IDEAS  CONVEYABLE  BY  ART. 
CHAPTER  I. — Introductory. 

PAG  B 

§ 1.  Public  opinion  no  criterion  of  excellence,  except  after 

long  periods  of  time 71 

§ 2.  And  therefore  obstinate  when  once  formed 74 

§ 8.  The  author’s  reasons  for  opposing  it  in  particular  in- 
stances   75 

§ 4.  But  only  on  points  capable  of  demonstration 76 

§ 5.  The  author’s  partiality  to  modern  works  excusable 77 

CHAPTER  II. — Definition  of  Greatness  in  Art. 

§ 1.  Distinction  between  the  painter’s  intellectual  power  and 

technical  knowledge 79 

§ 2.  Painting,  as  such,  is  nothing  more  than  language 79 

§ 3.  “ Painter,”  a term  corresponding  to  " versifier” 80 

§ 4.  Example  in  a painting  of  E.  Landseer’s 80 

§ 5.  Difficulty  of  fixing  an  exact  limit  between  language  and 

thought  81 

§ 6.  Distinction  between  decorative  and  expressive  language  81 

§ 7.  Instance  in  the  Dutch  and  early  Italian  schools 82 

§ 8.  Yet  there  are  certain  ideas  belonging  to  language  itself. . 83 

§9.  The  definition  . 83 


SYNOPSIS  OF  CONTENTS.  57 

CHAPTER  III.— Of  Ideas  of  Power. 

’ PAGE 

§ 1.  What  classes  of  ideas  are  conveyable  by  art 85 

§ 2.  Ideas  of  power  vary  much  in  relative  dignity 85 

§ 3.  But  are  received  from  whatever  has  been  the  subject  of 

power.  The  meaning  of  the  word  “excellence”...  86 
§4.  What  is  necessary  to  the  distinguishing  of  excellence. . 88 

§ 5.  The  pleasure  attendant  on  conquering  difficulties  is  right  88 

CHAPTER  IV.—  Of  Ideas  of  Imitation. 

§ 1.  False  use  of  the  term  “ imitation  ” by  many  writers  of  art  90 

§ 2.  Real  meaning  of  the  term 91 

§ 3.  What  is  requisite  to  the  sense  of  imitation 91 

§ 4.  The  pleasure  resulting  from  imitation  the  most  con- 
temptible that  can  be  derived  from  art 93 

§ 5.  Imitation  is  only  of  contemptible  subjects 93 

§ 6.  Imitation  is  contemptible  because  it  is  easy 93 

§ 7.  Recapitulation 94 

CHAPTER  V.— Of  Ideas  of  Truth. 

§ 1.  Meaning  of  the  word  “ truth”  as  applied  to  art 95 

§ 2.  First  difference  between  truth  and  imitation 95 

§ 3.  Second  difference 95 

§ 4.  Third  difference 96 

§ 5.  No  accurate  truths  necessary  to  imitation 96 

§ 6.  Ideas  of  truth  are  inconsistent  with  ideas  of  imitation  . 98 

CHAPTER  VI.— Of  Ideas  of  Beauty. 

§ 1.  Definition  of  the  term  “beautiful” 100 

§ 2.  Definition  of  the  term  “ taste” 101 

§ 3.  Distinction  between  taste  and  judgment 101 

§ 4.  How  far  beauty  may  become  intellectual 101 

§ 5.  The  high  rank  and  function  of  ideas  of  beauty 102 

§ 6.  Meaning  of  the  term  “ ideal  beauty” 102 

CHAPTER  VII.— Of  Ideas  of  Relation. 

§ 1.  General  meaning  of  the  term 104 

§ 2.  What  ideas  are  to  be  comprehended  under  it 104 

§ 3.  The  exceeding  nobility  of  these  ideas 105 

§ 4 . Why  no  subdivision  of  so  extensive  a class  is  necessary,  106 


58 


SYNOPSIS  OF  CONTENTS . 


SECTION  IL 


OF  POWER. 


CHAPTER  I.— General  Principles  respecting  Ideas  op 
Power. 


PAGE 


§ 1.  No  necessity  for  detailed  study  of  ideas  of  imitation.  A 107 

§ 2. ' Nor  for  separate  study  of  ideas  of  power 107 

§ 3.  Except  under  one  particular  form i . . 108 

§ 4.  There  are  two  modes  of  receiving  ideas  of  power,  com- 
monly inconsistent 108 

§ 5.  First  reason  of  the  inconsistency 109 

§ 6.  Second  reason  for  the  inconsistency 109 

§ 7.  The  sensation  of  power  ought  not  to  be  sought  in  im- 
perfect art 110 

§ 8.  Instances  in  pictures  of  modern  artists 110 

§ 9.  Connection  between  ideas  of  power  and  modes  of  execu- 
tion   Ill 


CHAPTER  II. — Of  Ideas  of  Power,  as  they  are  depend- 
ent upon  Execution. 


§ 

§ 

§ 

§ 

§ 

§ 

§ 

§ 

§ 

§ 


1.  Meaning  of  the  term  “execution” 112 

2.  The  first  quality  of  execution  is  truth 112 

3.  The  second,  simplicity 113 

4.  The  third,  mystery 113 

5.  The  fourth,  inadequacy  ; and  the  fifth,  decision. .....  113 

6.  The  sixth,  velocity 113 

7.  Strangeness  an  illegitimate  source  of  pleasure  in  execu- 

tion   114 

8.  Yet  even  the  legitimate  sources  of  pleasure  in  execu- 

tion are  inconsistent  with  each  other 115 

9.  And  fondness  for  ideas  of  power  leads  to  the  adoption 

of  the  lowest 116 

10.  Therefore  perilous 117 

11.  Recapitulation 117 


CHAPTER  III.— Of  the  Sublime. 

§ 1.  Sublimity  is  the  effect  upon  the  mind  of  anything  above  it  118 
§ 2.  Burke’s  theory  of  the  nature  of  the  sublime  incorrect, 


and  why 118 

§ 3.  Danger  is  sublime,  but  not  the  fear  of  it 119 

§ 4.  The  highest  beauty  is  sublime 119 

§5.  And  generally  whatever  elevates  the  mind 119 


§ 6.  The  former  division  of  the  subject  is  therefore  sufficient  120 


SYNOPSIS  OF  CONTENTS . 


59 


PART  II. 

OP  TRUTH. 


SECTION  I. 

GENERAL  PRINCIPLES  RESPECTING  IDEAS  OF  TRUTH. 
'CHAPTER  I. — Of  Ideas  of  Truth  m their  connection 

WITH  THOSE  OF  BEAUTY  AND  RELATION. 

PAGE 

§ 1.  The  two  great  ends  of  landscape  painting  are  the  rep- 
resentation of  facts  and  thoughts 121 

§ 2.  They  induce  a different  choice  of  material  subjects. . . 122 

§ 3.  The  first  mode  of  selection  apt  to  produce  sameness 

and  repetition 122 

§ 4.  The  second  necessitating  variety 123 

§ 5.  Yet  the  first  is  delightful  to  all 123 

§ 6.  The  second  only  to  a few 123 

§ 7.  The  first  necessary  to  the  second 124 

§ 8.  The  exceeding  importance  of  truth 125 

§ 9.  Coldness  or  want  of  beauty  no  sign  of  truth 126 

§ 10.  How  truth  may  be  considered  a just  criterion  of  all  art  126 

CHAPTER  II. — That  the  Truth  of  Nature  is  not  to  be 

DISCERNED  BY  THE  UNEDUCATED  SENSES. 

§ 1.  The  common  self-deception  of  men  with  respect  to 

their  powrer  of  discerning  truth 128 

§ 2.  Men  usually  see  little  of  what  is  before  their  eyes 129 

§ 3.  But  more  or  less  in  proportion  to  their  natural  sensibility 

to  what  is  beautiful 130 

§ 4.  Connected  with  a perfect  state  of  moral  feeling 131 

§ 5.  And  of  the  intellectual  powers 132 

§ 6.  How  sight  depends  upon  previous  knowledge 133 

§ 7.  The  difficulty  increased  by  the  variety  of  truths  in  nature  134 
§ 8.  We  recognize  objects  by  their  least  important  attri- 
butes. Compare  Part  I.,  Sect.  L,  Chap.  4 135 

CHAPTER  III. — Of  the  Relative  Importance  of  Truths  : 

— First,  that  Particular  Truths  are  more  im- 
portant than  General  Ones. 

§ 1.  Necessity  of  determining  the  relative  importance  of 


60 


SYNOPSIS  OF  CONTENTS. 


PAGE 


§2.  Misapplication  of  the  aphorism:  “General  truths  are 

more  important  than  particular  ones  ” 138 

§ 3.  Falseness  of  this  maxim  taken  without  explanation  . . . 139 

§ 4.  Generality  important  in  the  subject,  particularity  in  the 

predicate 140 

§ 5.  The  importance  of  truths  of  species  is  not  owing  to 

their  generality 140 

§ 6.  All  truths  valuable  as  they  are  characteristic 141 

§ 7.  Otherwise  truths  of  species  are  valuable,  because  beau- 
tiful  142 

§ 8.  And  many  truths,  valuable  if  separate,  may  be  objec- 
tionable in  connection  with  others 143 

§ 9.  Recapitulation 144 


CHAPTER  IV.— Of  the  Relative  Importance  of  Truths  : 
— Secondly,  that  Rare  Truths  are  more  im» 

PORTANT  THAN  FREQUENT  ONES. 


§ 1.  No  accidental  violation  of  nature’s  principles  should  be 

represented 145 

§ 2.  But  the  cases  in  which  those  principles  have  been  strik- 
ingly exemplified 146 

§3.  Which  are  comparatively  rare 146 

§ 4.  All  repetition  is  blamable 146 

§ 5.  The  duty  of  the  painter  is  the  same  as  that  of  a preacher  147 


CHAPTER  V. — Of  the  Relative  Importance  of  Truths  : 
— Thirdly,  that  Truths  of  Color  are  the 


least  important  of  all  Truths. 

§ 1.  Difference  between  primary  and  secondary  qualities  in 

bodies 148 

§ 2.  The  first  are  fully  characteristic,  the  second  imperfectly 

so 148 

§ 3.  Color  is  a secondary  quality,  therefore  less  important 

than  form 149 

§ 4.  Color  no  distinction  between  objects  of  the  same  species  150 

§ 5.  And  different  in  association  from  what  it  is  alone 150 

§ 6.  It  is  not  certain  whether  any  two  people  see  the  same 

colors  in  things 150 

§ 7.  Form,  considered  as  an  element  of  landscape,  includes 

light  and  shade 151 

§ 8.  Importance  of  light  and  shade  in  expressing  the  char- 
acter of  bodies,  and  unimportance  of  color 152 

§ 9,  Recapitulation 153 


SYNOPSIS  OF  CONTENTS. 


61 


CHAPTER  VI.—  Recapitulation. 

PAGE 

§ 1.  The  importance  of  historical  truths 154 

§ 2.  Form,  as  explained  by  light  and  shade,  the  first  of  all 

truths.  Tone,  light,  and  color  are  secondary 155 

§ 3.  And  deceptive  chiaroscuro  the  lowest  of  all 155 

CHAPTER  VII. — General  Application  of  the  Foregoing 
Principles. 

§ 1.  The  different  selection  of  facts  consequent  on  the  sev- 

. eral  aims  at  imitation  or  at  truth 156 

§ 2.  The  old  masters,  as  a body,  aim  only  at  imitation 156 

§ 3.  What  truths  they  gave 157 

§ 4.  The  principles  of  selection  adopted  by  modern  artists  159 
§ 5.  General  feeling  of  Claude,  Salvator,  and  G.  Poussin, 

contrasted  with  the  freedom  and  vastness  of  nature  159 
§ 6.  Inadequacy  of  the  landscape  of  Titian  and  Tintoret . . 160 

§ 7.  Causes  of  its  want  of  influence  on  subsequent  schools  162 
§ 8.  The  value  of  inferior  works  of  art,  how  to  be  estimated  163 
§ 9.  Religious  landscape  of  Italy.  The  admirableness  of 

its  completion 165 

§ 10.  Finish,  and  the  want  of  it,  how  right  and  how  wrong  166 
§ 11.  The  open  skies  of  the  religious  schools,  how  valuable. 
Mountain  drawing  of  Masaccio.  Landscape  of  the 

Bellinis  and  Giorgione 169 

§ 12.  Landscape  of  Titian  and  Tintoret 171 

§ 13.  Schools  of  Florence,  Milan,  and  Bologna 173 

§ 14.  Claude,  Salvator,  and  the  Poussins 174 

§ 15.  German  and  Flemish  landscape ...  175 

§ 16.  The  lower  Dutch  schools 177 

§ 17.  English  school,  Wilson  and  Gainsborough 178 

§ 18.  Constable,  Calcott 180 

§ 19.  Peculiar  tendency  of  recent  landscape 181 

§ 20.  G.  Robson,  D.  Cox.  False  use  of  the  term  “ style  ”. . 182 

§ 21.  Copley  Fielding.  Phenomena  of  distant  color 185 

§ 22.  Beauty  of  mountain  foreground 186 

§ 23.  De  Wint 189 

§ 24.  Influence  of  Engraving.  J.  D.  Harding 189 

§ 25.  Samuel  Prout.  Early  painting  of  architecture,  how 

deficient 191 

§ 26.  Effects  of  age  upon  buildings,  how  far  desirable 192 

§ 27.  Effects  of  light,  how  necessary  to  the  understanding 

of  detail 195 

§ 28.  Architectural  painting  of  Gentile  Bellini  and  Vittor 

Carpaccio 197 


62 


SYNOPSIS  OF  CONTENTS. 


PAGE 


§ 29.  And  of  the  Venetians  generally. 198 

§ 30.  Fresco  painting  of  the  Venetian  exteriors.  Canaletto  199 
§ 81.  Expression  of  the  effects  of  age  on  Architecture  by  S. 

Prout 203 

§ 32.  His  excellent  composition  and  color 205 

§ 33.  Modern  architectural  painting  generally.  G.  Catter- 

mole 206 

§ 34.  The  evil  in  an  archaeological  point  of  view  of  misap- 
plied invention  in  architectural  subject 208 

§35.  Works  of  David  Roberts  : their  fidelity  and  grace 209 

§ 36.  Clarkson  Stanfield 213 

§ 37.  J.  M.  W.  Turner.  Force  of  national  feeling  in  all 

great  painters 215 

§ 38.  Influence  of  this  feeling  on  the  choice  of  Landscape 

subject 218 

§ 39.  Its  peculiar  manifestation  in  Turner 219 

§ 40.  The  domestic  subjects  of  the  Liber  Studiorum 221 

§ 41.  Turner’s  painting  of  French  and  Swiss  landscape. 

The  latter  deficient 223 

§ 42.  His  rendering  of  Italian  character  still  less  successful. 

His  large  compositions  how  failing 224 

§ 43.  His  views  of  Italy  destroyed  by  brilliancy  and  redun- 
dant quantity 226 

§ 44.  Changes  introduced  by  him  in  the  received  system  of 

art  228 

§ 45.  Difficulties  of  his  later  manner.  Resultant  deficiencies  230 

§ 46.  Reflection  of  his  very  recent  works 233 

§ 47.  Difficulty  of  demonstration  in  such  subjects 235 


SECTION  II. 

OF  GENERAL  TRUTHS. 

CHAPTER  I.— Of  Truth  of  Tone. 

§ 1.  Meaning  of  the  word  “ tone  : ” First,  the  right  relation 


of  objects  in  shadow  to  the  principal  light 237 

§ 2.  Secondly,  the  quality  of  color  by  which  it  is  felt  to  owe 

part  of  its  brightness  to  the  hue  of  light  upon  it. . . . 237 

§ 3.  Difference  between  tone  in  its  first  sense  and  aerial  per- 
spective   238 

§ 4.  The  pictures  of  the  old  masters  perfect  in  relation  of 

middle  tints  to  light  . . . ■ 238 


SYNOPSIS  OF  CONTENTS. 


63 


PAGE 


§ 5.  And  consequently  totally  false  in  relation  of  middle 

tints  to  darkness 239 

§ 6.  General  falsehood  of  such  a system 240 

§ 7.  The  principle  of  Turner  in  this  respect 241 

§ 8.  Comparison  of  N.  Poussin’s  “Phocion” 242 

§ 9.  With  Turner’s  “ Mercury  and  Argus” 243 

§ 10.  And  with  the  “ Datur  Hora  Quieti  ” 243 

§ 11.  The  second  sense  of  the  word  “ tone  ” 244 

§ 12.  Remarkable  difference  in  this  respect  between  the 

paintings  and  drawings  of  Turner 244 

§ 13.  Not  owing  to  want  of  power  over  the  material 245 

§ 14.  The  two  distinct  qualities  of  light  to  be  considered. . . 240 

§ 15.  Falsehoods  by  which  Titian  attains  the  appearance  of 

quality  in  light 246 

§ 16.  Turner  will  not  use  such  means. 247 

§17.  But  gains  in  essential  truth  by  the  sacrifice 248 

§ 18.  The  second  quality  of  light 248 

§ 19.  The  perfection  of  Cuyp  in  this  respect  interfered  with 

by  numerous  solecisms 249 

§ 20.  Turner  is  not  so  perfect  in  parts — far  more  so  in  the 

whole. . 250 

§ 21.  The  power  in  Turner  of  uniting  a number  of  tones. . . 251 

§ 22.  Recapitulation 253 


CHAPTER  II.— Of  Truth  of  Color. 


§ 1.  Observations  on  the  color  of  G.  Poussin’s  La  Riccia. . 

§ 2.  As  compared  with  the  actual  scene 

§ 3.  Turner  himself  is  inferior  in  brilliancy  to  nature 

§ 4.  Impossible  colors  of  Salvator,  Titian 

§ 5.  Poussin,  and  Claude 

§ 6.  Turner’s  translation  of  colors 

§ 7.  Notice  of  effects  in  which  no  brilliancy  of  art  can  even 

approach  that  of  reality 

§ 8.  Reasons  for  the  usual  incredulity  of  the  observer  with 

respect  to  their  representation  

§ 9.  Color  of  the  Napoleon 

§ 10.  Necessary  discrepancy  between  the  attainable  brillian- 
cy of  color  and  light 

§ 11.  This  discrepancy  less  in  Turner  than  in  other  colorists 
§ 12.  Its  great  extent  in  a landscape  attributed  to  Rubens  . . 

§ 13.  Turner  scarcely  ever  uses  pure  or  vivid  color 

§ 14.  The  basis  of  gray,  under  all  his  vivid  hues 

§ 15.  The  variety  and  fulness  even  of  his  most  simple  tones 


255 

256 

257 

258 

259 
261 

262 

263 

265 

266 
267 

267 

268 
270 
270 


64 


SYNOPSIS  OF  CONTENTS. 


PAG* 


§ 16.  Following  the  infinite  and  unapproachable  variety  of 

nature 271 

§ 17.  His  dislike  of  purple,  and  fondness  for  the  opposition 
of  yellow  and  black.  The  principles  of  nature  in 

this  respect 272 

§ 18.  His  early  works  are  false  in  color 274 

§ 19.  His  drawings  invariably  perfect 274 

§ 20.  The  subjection  of  his  system  of  color  to  that  of  chi- 
aroscuro   275 

CHAPTER  III. — Op  Truth  of  Chiaroscuro. 

§ 1.  We  are  not  at  present  to  examine  particular  effects  of 

light 278 

§ 2.  And  therefore  the  distinctness  of  shadows  is  the  chief 

means  of  expressing  vividness  of  light 279 

§ 3.  Total  absence  of  such  distinctness  in  the  works  of  the 

Italian  school 280 


§ 4.  And  partial  absence  in  the  Dutch 280 

§ 5.  The  perfection  of  Turner’s  works  in  this  respect 281 

§ 6.  The  effect  of  his  shadows  upon  the  light 283 


§ 7.  The  distinction  holds  good  between  almost  all  the 

works  of  the  ancient  and  modern  schools 284 

§ 8.  Second  great  principle  of  chiaroscuro.  Both  high 
light  and  deep  shadow  are  used  in  equal  quantity, 

and  only  in  points 285 

§ 9.  Neglect  or  contradiction  of  this  principle  by  writers 

on  art 286 

§ 10.  And  consequent  misguiding  of  the  student 286 

§ 11.  The  great  value  of  a simple  chiaroscuro 287 

§ 12.  The  sharp  separation  of  nature’s  lights  from  her  mid- 
dle tint 288 

§ 13.  The  truth  of  Turner 289 

CHAPTER  IV.— Of  Truth  of  Space  First,  as  Depend- 
ent ON  THE  Focus  OF  THE  EYE. 

§ 1.  Space  is  more  clearly  indicated  by  the  drawing  of  ob- 
jects than  by  their  hue 291 

§ 2.  It  is  impossible  to  see  objects  at  unequal  distances  dis- 
tinctly at  one  moment 292 

§ 3.  Especially  such  as  are  both  comparatively  near 293 

§ 4.  In  painting,  therefore,  either  the  foreground  or  distance 

must  be  partially  sacrificed 293 

§ 5.  Which  not  being  done  by  the  old  masters,  they  could 

not  express  space 294 


SYNOPSIS  OF  CONTENTS. 


65 


PAG  ft 

§ 6.  But  modern  artists  have  succeeded  in  fully  carrying  out 

this  principle . 294 

§ 7.  Especially  of  Turner 296 

§ 8.  Justification  of  the  want  of  drawing  in  Turner’s  figures  296 

CHAPTER  Y. — Of  Truth  of  Space  : — Secondly,  as  its  Ap- 
pearance is  Dependent  on  the  Power  of  the 
Eye. 

§ 1.  The  peculiar  indistinctness  dependent  on  the  retire- 
ment of  objects  from  the  eye 298 

§ 2.  Causes  confusion,  but  not  annihilation  of  details 299 

§ 3.  Instances  in  various  objects 299 

§ 4.  Two  great  resultant  truths  ; that  nature  is  never  dis- 
tinct, and  never  vacant 300 

§ 5.  Complete  violation  of  both  those  principles  by  the  old 

masters.  They  are  either  distinct  or  vacant 301 

§ 6.  Instances  from  Nicholas  Poussin 301 

§ 7.  From  Claude 302 

§ 8.  And  G.  Poussin 303 

§ 9.  The  imperative  necessity,  in  landscape  painting,  of 

fulness  and  finish 304 

§ 10.  Breadth  is  not  vacancy.  305 

§11.  The  fulness  and  mystery  of  Turner’s  distances 307 

§ 12.  Farther  illustrations  in  architectural  drawing 307 

§ 13.  In  near  objects  as  well  as  distances 308 

§ 14.  Vacancy  and  falsehood  of  Canaletto 309 

§ 15.  Still  greater  fulness  and  finish  in  landscape  foregrounds  309 

§ 16.  Space  and  size  are  destroyed  alike  by  distinctness  and 

by  vacancy - 311 

§ 17.  Swift  execution  best  secures  perfection  of  details  ....  311 

§ 18.  Finish  is  far  more  necessary  in  landscape  than  in  his- 
torical subjects 312 

§ 19.  Recapitulation  of  the  section 313 

SECTION  in. 

OF  TRUTH  OF  SKIES. 

CHAPTER  I.— Of  the  Open  Sky. 

§ 1.  The  peculiar  adaptation  of  the  sky  to  the  pleasing  and 

teaching  of  man 314 

§ 2.  The  carelessness  with  which  its  lessons  are  received. . 315 

§ 3.  The  most  essential  of  these  lessons  are  the  gentlest. . . 316 
5 


66 


SYNOPSIS  OF  CONTENTS . 


PAGE 


§ 4.  Many  of  our  ideas  of  sky  altogether  conventional 816 

§ 5.  Nature  and  essential  qualities  of  the  open  blue 317 

§ 6.  Its  connection  with  clouds 317 

§ 7.  Its  exceeding  depth 318 

§ 8.  These  qualities  are  especially  given  by  modern  masters  318 

§ 9.  And  by  Claude 319 

§ 10.  Total  absence  of  them  in  Poussin.  Physical  errors  in 

his  general  treatment  of  open  sky 319 

§ 11.  Errors  of  Cuyp  in  graduation  of  color 320 

§ 12.  The  exceeding  value  of  the  skies  of  the  early  Italian 
and  Dutch  schools.  Their  qualities  are  unattainable 

in  modern  times 322 

§ 13.  Phenomena  of  visible  sunbeams.  Their  nature  and 

cause 322 

§ 14.  They  are  only  illuminated  mist,  and  cannot  appear 
when  the  sky  is  free  from  vapor,  nor  when  it  is 

without  clouds 323 

§ 15.  Erroneous  tendency  in  the  representation  of  such 

phenomena  by  the  old  masters.  324 

§16.  The  ray  which  appears  in  the  dazzled  eye  should  not 

be  represented 325 

§ 17.  The  practice  of  Turner.  His  keen  perception  of  the 

more  delicate  phenomena  of  rays 325 

§ 18.  The  total  absence  of  any  evidence  of  such  perception 

in  the  works  of  the  old  masters 326 

§ 19.  Truth  of  the  skies  of  modern  drawings 327 

§ 20.  Recapitulation.  The  best  skies  of  the  ancients  are,  in 
quality , inimitable,  but  in  rendering  of  various 
truth,  childish 327 


CHAPTER  II. — Of  Truth  of  Clouds  : — First,  of  the  Re- 
gion of  the  Cirrus. 


§ 1.  Difficulty  of  ascertaining  wherein  the  truth  of  clouds 

consists 

§ 2.  Variation  of  their  character  at  different  elevations. 
The  three  regions  to  which  they  may  conveniently 

be  considered  as  belonging 

§ 3.  Extent  of  the  upper  region 

§ 4.  The  symmetrical  arrangement  of  its  clouds 

§ 5.  Their  exceeding  delicacy 

§ 6.  Their  number 

§ 7.  Causes  of  their  peculiarly  delicate  coloring 

§ 8.  Their  variety  of  form 


328 


329 

329 

329 

330 

331 

332 
332 


SYNOPSIS  OF  CONTENTS . 


67 


PAGE 

§ 9.  Total  absence  of  even  the  slightest  effort  at  their  rep- 


resentation, in  ancient  landscape 333 

§ 10.  The  intense  and  constant  study  of  them  by  Turner. . . 334 

§11.  His  vignette,  Sunrise  on  the  Sea 335 

§ 12.  His  use  of  the  cirrus  in  expressing  mist 336 

§ 13.  His  consistency  in  every  minor  feature 337 

§ 14.  The  color  of  the  upper  clouds  . . . . 338 

§ 15.  Recapitulation 339 


CHAPTER  III. — Of  Truth  of  Clouds  Secondly,  of  the 
Central  Cloud  Region. 

§ 1.  Extent  and  typical  character  of  the  central  cloud  region  341 
§ 2.  Its  characteristic  clouds,  requiring  no  attention  nor 


thought  for  their  representation,  are  therefore  favor- 
ite subjects  with  the  old  masters 342 

§ 3.  The  clouds  of  Salvator  and  Poussin 342 

§ 4.  Their  essential  characters 343 

§ 5.  Their  angular  forms  and  general  decision  of  outline. . 344 

§ 6.  The  composition  of  their  minor  curves 345 

§ 7.  Their  characters,  as  given  by  S.  Rosa 345 

§ 8.  Monotony  and  falsehood  of  the  clouds  of  the  Italian 

school  generally 346 

§ 9.  Vast  size  of  congregated  masses  of  cloud 347 

§ 10.  Demonstrable  by  comparison  with  mountain  ranges..  348 
§ 11.  And  consequent  divisions  and  varieties  of  feature.. . . 348 

§ 12.  Not  lightly  to  be  omitted 349 

§ 13.  Imperfect  conceptions  of  this  size  and  extent  in  ancient 

landscape 350 

§ 14.  Total  wrant  of  transparency  and  evanescence  in  the 

clouds  of  ancient  landscape 351 

§ 15.  Farther  proof  of  their  deficiency  in  space 352 

§ 16.  Instance  of  perfect  truth  in  the  sky  of  Turner’s  Babylon  353 

§ 17.  And  in  his  Pools  of  Solomon 354 

§ 18.  Truths  of  outline  and  character  in  his  Como 355 

§ 19.  Association  of  the  cirrostratus  with  the  cumulus 355 

§ 20.  The  deep-based  knowledge  of  the  Alps  in  Turner’s 

Lake  of  Geneva 356 

§ 21.  Further  principles  of  cloud  form  exemplified  in  his 

Amalfi  356 

§ 22.  Reasons  for  insisting  on  the  infinity  of  Turner’s  works. 

Infinity  is  almost  an  unerring  test  of  all  truth 357 

§ 23.  Instances  of  the  total  want  of  it  in  the  works  of  Salva- 
tor   358 


68 


SYNOPSIS  OF  CONTENTS. 


PAGE 


§ 24.  And  of  the  universal  presence  of  it  in  those  of  Turner. 

The  conclusions  which  may  be  arrived  at  from  it  . . 359 
§ 35.  The  multiplication  of  objects,  or  increase  of  their  size, 
will  not  give  the  impression  of  infinity,  but  is  the 

resource  of  novices 359 

§ 36.  Farther  instances  of  infinity  in  the  gray  skies  of  Turner  360 

§ 37.  The  excellence  of  the  cloud-drawing  of  Stanfield 361 

§ 38.  The  average  standing  of  the  English  school 361 


CHAPTER  IY. — Of  Truth  of  Clouds: — Thirdly,  of  the 
Region  of  the  Rain-Cloud. 

§ 1.  The  apparent  difference  in  character  between  the  lower 


and  central  clouds  is  dependent  chiefly  on  proximity  363 

§ 3.  Their  marked  difference  in  color 363 

§ 3.  And  in  definiteness  of  form 364 

§ 4.  They  are  subject  to  precisely  the  same  great  laws 365 

§ 5.  Value,  to  the  painter,  of  the  rain-cloud 366 

§ 6.  The  old  masters  have  not  left  a single  instance  of  the 
painting  of  the  rain-cloud,  and  very  few  efforts  at 

it.  Gaspar  Poussin’s  storms 367 

§ 7.  The  great  power  of  the  moderns  in  this  respect 368 

§ 8.  Works  of  Copley  Fielding 368 

§ 9.  His  peculiar  truth 368 

§ 10.  His  weakness  and  its  probable  cause 369 

§ 11.  Impossibility  of  reasoning  on  the  rain-clouds  of  Tur- 
ner from  engravings 370 

§ 13.  His  rendering  of  Fielding’s  particular  moment  in  the 

Jumieges 371 

§ 13.  Illustration  of  the  nature  of  clouds  in  the  opposed 

forms  of  smoke  and  steam 371 

§ 14.  Moment  of  retiring  rain  in  the  Llanthony 373 

§ 15.  And  of  commencing,  chosen  with  peculiar  meaning 

for  Loch  Coriskin  373 

§ 16.  The  drawing  of  transparent  vapor  in  the  Land’s  End  374 

§ 17.  The  individual  character  of  its  parts 375 

§ 18.  Deep  studied  form  of  swift  rain-cloud  in  the  Coventry  375 

§ 19.  Compared  with  forms  given  by  Salvator 376 

§ 30.  Entire  expression  of  tempest  by  minute  touches  and 

circumstances  in  the  Coventry 376 

§ 31.  Especially  by  contrast  with  a passage  of  extreme  repose  377 
§ 23.  The  truth  of  this  particular  passage.  Perfectly  pure 

blue  sky  only  seen  after  rain,  and  how  seen 377 

§ 23.  Absence  of  this  effect  in  the  works  of  the  old  masters  378 


SYNOPSIS  OF  CONTENTS . 


69 


PAGE 

§ 24.  Success  of  our  water-color  artists  in  its  rendering. 

Use  of  it  by  Turner 379 

§ 25.  Expression  of  near  rain-cloud  in  the  Gosport,  and  other 

works 379 

§ 28.  Contrasted  with  Gaspar  Poussin’s  rain-cloud  in  the 

Dido  and  iEneas . . ...  380 

§ 27.  Turner’s  power  of  rendering  mist 380 

§ 28.  His  effects  of  mist  so  perfect,  that  if  not  at  once  un- 
derstood, they  can  no  more  be  explained  or  reasoned 

' on  than  nature  herself 381 

§ 29.  Various  instances 382 

§ 30.  Turner’s  more  violent  effects  of  tempest  are  never  ren- 
dered by  engravers 382 

§ 31.  General  system  of  landscape  engraving 382 

§ 32.  The  storm  in  the  Stonehenge 383 

§ 33.  General  character  of  such  effects  as  given  by  Turner. 

His  expression  of  falling  rain 384 

§ 34.  Recapitulation  of  the  section 384 

§ 35.  Sketch  of  a few  of  the  skies  of  nature,  taken  as  a 
whole,  compared  with  the  works  of  Turner  and  of 

the  old  masters.  Morning  on  the  plains . . 385 

§ 36.  Noon  with  gathering  storms 386 

§ 37.  Sunset  in  tempest.  Serene  midnight 387 

§ 38.  And  sunrise  on  the  Alps 388 

CHAPTER  V. — Effects  of  Light  rendered  by  Modern 
Art. 

§ 1.  Reasons  for  merely,  at  present,  naming,  without  exam- 
ining the  particular  effects  of  light  rendered  by  Tur- 
ner   389 

| 2.  Hopes  of  the  author  for  assistance  in  the  future  investi- 
gation of  them 389 


V: 


i7 


'• 


2 


t 


MODERN  PAINTERS. 


PART  I. 

OF  GENERAL  PRINCIPLES. 


SECTION  I. 

OF  THE  NATURE  OF  THE  IDEAS  CONVEYABLE  BY  ART. 


CHAPTER  I. 

INTRODUCTORY. 

If  it  be  true,  and  it  can  scarcely  be  disputed,  that 
nothing  has  been  for  centuries  consecrated  by  public 
admiration,  without  possessing  in  a high  degree  some 
kind  of  sterling  excellence,  it  is  not  because  the  average 
intellect  and  feeling  of  the  majority  of  the  public  are 
competent  in  any  way  to  distinguish  what 

11  i i i i n §L  Public  opm- 

is  really  excellent,  but  because  all  errone-  ion  no  criterion  of 

. . . . i n excellence,  except 

ous  opinion  is  inconsistent,  and  ail  un-  aaer^iong  periods 

grounded  opinion  transitory ; so  that  while 
the  fancies  and  feelings  which  deny  deserved  honor  and 
award  what  is  undue  have  neither  root  nor  strength  suf- 
ficient to  maintain  consistent  testimony  for  a length  of 
time,  the  opinions  formed  on  right  grounds  by  those  few 
who  are  in  reality  competent  judges,  being  necessarily 
stable,  communicate  themselves  gradually  from  mind  to 


?2 


INTRODUCTORY . 


mind,  descending  lower  as  they  extend  wider,  until  they 
leaven  the  whole  lump,  and  rule  by  absolute  authority, 
even  where  the  grounds  and  reasons  for  them  cannot  be 
understood.  On  this  gradual  victory  of  what  is  consist- 
ent over  what  is  vacillating,  depends  the  reputation  of 
all  that  is  highest  in  art  and  literature.  For  it  is  an  in- 
sult to  what  is  really  great  in  either,  to  suppose  that  it 
in  any  way  addresses  itself  to  mean  or  uncultivated  fac- 
ulties. It  is  a matter  of  the  simplest  demonstration,  that 
no  man  can  be  really  appreciated  but  by  his  equal  or  su- 
perior. His  inferior  may  over-estimate  him  in  enthusi- 
asm ; or,  as  is  more  commonly  the  case,  degrade  him,  in 
ignorance ; but  he  cannot  form  a grounded  and  just  esti- 
mate. Without  proving  this,  however — which  it  would 
take  more  space  to  do  than  I can  spare — it  is  sufficiently 
evident  that  there  is  no  process  of  amalgamation  by 
which  opinions,  wrong  individually,  can  become  right 
merely  by  their  multitude.* 

If  I stand  by  a picture  in  the  Academy,  and  hear 
twenty  persons  in  succession  admiring  some  paltry  piece 
of  mechanism  or  imitation  in  the  lining  of  a cloak,  or  the 
satin  of  a slipper,  it  is  absurd  to  tell  me  that  they  repro- 
bate collectively  what  they  admire  individually:  or,  if 
they  pa,ss  with  apathy  by  a piece  of  the  most  noble  con- 
ception or  most  perfect  truth,  because  it  has  in  it  no 
tricks  of  the  brush  nor  grimace  of  expression,  it  is  ab- 
surd to  tell  me  that  they  collectively  respect  what  they 
separately  scorn,  or  that  the  feelings  and  knowledge  of 
such  judges,  by  any  length  of  time  or  comparison  of 
ideas,  could  come  to  any  right  conclusion  with  respect 
to  what  is  really  high  in  art.  The  question  is  not  de- 

* The  opinion  of  a majority  is  right  only  when  it  is  more  probable 
with  each  individual  that  he  should  be  right  than  that  he  should  be 
wrong,  as  in  the  case  of  a jury.  Where  it  is  more  probable,  with  re- 
spect to  each  individual,  that  he  should  be  wrong  than  right,  the 
opinion  of  the  minority  is  the  true  one.  Thus  it  is  in  art. 


INTRODUCTORY. 


73 


cided  by  them,  but  for  them ; — decided  at  first  by  few : 
by  fewer  in  proportion  as  the  merits  of  the  work  are  of  a 
higher  order.  From  these  few  the  decision  is  communi- 
cated to  the  number  next  below  them  in  rank  of  mind, 
and  by  these  again  to  a wider  and  lower  circle  ; each 
rank  being  so  far  cognizant  of  the  superiority  of  that 
above  it,  as  to  receive  its  decision  with  respect ; until,  in 
process  of  time,  the  right  and  consistent  opinion  is  com- 
municated to  all,  and  held  by  all  as  a matter  of  faith,  the 
more  positively  in  proportion  as  the  grounds  of  it  are 
less  perceived.* 

* There  are,  however,  a thousand  modifying  circumstances  which 
render  this  process  sometimes  unnecessary,— sometimes  rapid  and  cer- 
tain— sometimes  impossible.  It  is  unnecessary  in  rhetoric  and  the 
drama,  because  the  multitude  is  the  only  proper  judge  of  those  arts 
whose  end  is  to  move  the  multitude  (though  more  is  necessary  to  a 
fine  play  than  is  essentially  dramatic,  and  it  is  only  of  the  dramatic 
part  that  the  multitude  are  cognizant).  It  is  unnecessary,  when,  unit- 
ed with  the  higher  qualities  of  a work,  there  are  appeals  to  universal 
passion,  to  all  the  faculties  and  feelings  which  are  general  in  man  as 
an  animal:  The  popularity  is  then  as  sudden  as  it  is  well  grounded, 

— it  is  hearty  and  honest  in  every  mind,  but  it  is  based  in  every  mind 
on  a different  species  of  excellence.  Such  will  often  be  the  case  with 
the  noblest  works  of  literature.  Take  Don  Quixote  for  example.  The 
lowest  mind  would  find  in  it  perpetual  and  brutal  amusement  in  the 
misfortunes  of  the  knight,  and  perpetual  pleasure  in  sympathy  with 
the  squire.  A mind  of  average  feeling  would  perceive  the  satirical 
meaning  and  force  of  the  book,  would  appreciate  its  wit,  its  elegance, 
and  its  truth.  But  only  elevated  and  peculiar  minds  discover,  in  addi- 
tion to  all  this,  the  full  moral  beauty  of  the  love  and  truth  which  are 
the  constant  associates  of  all  that  is  even  most  weak  and  erring  in  the 
character  of  its  hero,  and  pass  over  the  rude  adventure  and  scurrile 
jest  in  haste — perhaps  in  pain,  to  penetrate  beneath  the  rusty  corselet, 
and  catch  from  the  wandering  glance  the  evidence  and  expression  of 
fortitude,  self-devotion,  and  universal  love.  So,  again  with  the  works 
of  Scott  and  Byron  ; popularity  was  as  instant  as  it  was  deserved,  be- 
cause there  is  in  them  an  appeal  to  those  passions  which  are  universal 
in  all  men,  as  well  as  an  expression  of  such  thoughts  as  can  be  re- 
ceived only  by  the  few.  But  they  are  admired  by  the  majority  of  their 
advocates  for  the  weakest  parts  of  their  works,  as  a popular  preachei 
by  the  majority  of  his  congregation  for  the  worst  part  of  his  sermon 


74 


INTRODUCTORY. 


But  when  this  process  has  taken  place,  and  the  work 
has  become  sanctified  by  time  in  the  minds  of  men,  it  is 
impossible  that  any  new  work  of  equal  merit  can  be  im- 
partially compared  with  it,  except  by  minds  not  only 
educated  and  generally  capable  of  appre- 

§ 2.  And  therefore  ...  J L . , V, 

obstinate  when  dating  merit,  but  strong  enough  to  shake 
off  the  weight  of  prejudice  and  association, 
which  invariably  incline  them  to  the  older  favorite.  It 
is  much  easier,  says  Barry,  to  repeat  the  character 

The  process  is  rapid  and  certain,  when,  though  there  may  be  little 
to  catch  the  multitude  at  once,  there  is  much  which  they  can  enjoy  when 
their  attention  is  authoritatively  directed  to  it.  So  rests  the  reputa- 
tion of  Sliakspeare.  No  ordinary  mind  can  comprehend  wherein 
his  undisputed  superiority  consists,  but  there  is  yet  quite  as  much 
to  amuse,  thrill,  or  excite, — quite  as  much  of  what  is,  in  the  strict 
sense  of  the  word,  dramatic  in  his  works  as  in  any  one  else’s.  They 
were  received,  therefore,  when  first  written,  with  average  approval,  as 
works  of  common  merit ; but  when  the  high  decision  was  made,  and 
the  circle  spread,  the  public  took  up  the  hue  and  cry  conscientiously 
enough.  Let  them  have  daggers,  ghosts,  clowns,  and  kings,  and  with 
such  real  and  definite  sources  of  enjoyment,  they  will  take  the  addi- 
tional trouble  to  learn  half  a dozen  quotations,  without  understanding 
them,  and  admit  the  superiority  of  Shakspeare  without  further  de- 
mur. Nothing,  perhaps,  can  more  completely  demonstrate  the  total 
ignorance  of  the  public  of  all  that  is  great  or  valuable  in  Shakspeare 
than  their  universal  admiration  of  Maclise’s  Hamlet. 

The  process  is  impossible  when  there  is  in  the  work  nothing  to  at- 
tract and  something  to  disgust  the  vulgar  mind.  Neither  their  intrin- 
sic excellence,  nor  the  authority  of  those  who  can  judge  of  it,  will  ever 
make  the  poems  of  Wordsworth  or  George  Herbert  popular,  iu  the 
sense  in  which  Scott  and  Byron  are  popular,  because  it  is  to  the  vul- 
gar a labor  instead  of  a pleasure  to  read  them  ; and  there  are  parts  in 
them  which  to  such  judges  cannot  but  be  vapid  or  ridiculous.  Most 
works  of  the  highest  art, — those  of  Raffaelle,  M.  Angelo,  or  Da  Yinci, 
— stand  as  Shakspeare  does, — that  which  is  commonplace  and  feeble 
in  their  excellence  being  taken  for  its  essence  by  the  uneducated,  im- 
agination assisting  the  impression,  (for  we  readily  fancy  that  we  feel, 
when  feeling  is  a matter  of  pride  or  conscience,)  and  affectation  and 
pretension  increasing  the  noise  of  the  rapture,  if  not  its  degree.  Giotto, 
Orgagna,  Angelico,  Perugino.  stand,  like  George  Herbert,  only  with 
the  few.  Wilkie  becomes  popular,  like  Scott,  because  he  touches  pas- 
sions which  all  feel,  and  expresses  truths  which  all  can  recognize. 


INTRODUCTORY . 


75 


recorded  of  Pliidias,  than  to  investigate  the  merits  of 
Agasias.  And  when,  as  peculiarly  in  the  case  of  paint- 
ing, much  knowledge  of  what  is  technical  and  practical 
is  necessary  to  a right  judgment,  so  that  those  alone  are 
competent  to  pronounce  a true  verdict  who  are  them- 
selves the  persons  to  be  judged,  and  who  therefore  can 
give  no  opinion,  centuries  may  elapse  before  fair  com- 
parison can  be  made  between  two  artists  of  different 
ages ; while  the  patriarchal  excellence  exercises  during 
the  interval  a tyrannical— perhaps,  even  a blighting, 
influence  over  the  minds,  both  of  the  public  and  of  those 
to  whom,  properly  understood,  it  should  serve  for  a 
guide  and  example.  In  no  city  of  Europe  where  art  is  a 
subject  of  attention,  are  its  prospects  so  hopeless,  or  its 
pursuits  so  resultless,  as  in  Rome ; because  there,  among’ 
all  students,  the  authority  of  their  predecessors  in  art  is 
supreme  and  without  appeal,  and  the  mindless  copyist 
studies  Raffaelle,  but  not  what  Raffaelle  studied.  It 
thus  becomes  the  duty  of  every  one  capable  of  demon- 
strating any  definite  points  of  superiority  in  modem  art, 
and  who  is  in  a position  in  which  his  doing  so  will  not 
be  ungraceful,  to  encounter  without  hesitation  whatever 
opprobrium  may  fall  upon  him  from  the  § 3 The  author,s 
necessary  prejudice  even  of  the  most  can- 
did  minds,  and  from  the  far  more  virulent  mstances- 
opposition  of  those  who  have  no  hope  of  maintaining 
their  own  reputation  for  discernment  but  in  the  support 
of  that  kind  of  consecrated  merit  which  may  be  ap- 
plauded without  an  inconvenient  necessity  for  rea- 
sons. It  is  my  purpose,  therefore,  believing  that  there 
are  certain  points  of  superiority  in  modem  artists,  and 
especially  in  one  or  two  of  their  number,  which  have  not 
yet  been  fully  understood,  except  by  those  who  are 
scarcely  in  a position  admitting  the  declaration  of  their 
conviction,  to  institute  a close  comparison  between  the 
great  works  of  ancient  and  modern  landscape  art,  to 


76 


INTRODUCTORY . 


raise,  as  far  as  possible,  the  deceptive  veil  of  imaginary 
light  through  which  we  are  accustomed  to  gaze  upon 
the  patriarchal  work,  and  to  show  the  real  relations, 
whether  favorable  or  otherwise,  subsisting  between  it 
and  our  own.  I am  fully  aware  that  this  is  not  to  be 
done  lightly  or  rashly ; that  it  is  the  part  of  every  one 
proposing  to  undertake  such  a task  strictly  to  examine, 
with  prolonged  doubt  and  severe  trial,  every  opinion  in 
any  way  contrary  to  the  sacred  verdict  of  time,  and  to 
advance  nothing  which  does  not,  at  least  in  his  own  con- 
viction, rest  on  surer  ground  than  mere  feeling  or  taste. 
I have  accordingly  advanced  nothing  in  the  following 
pages  but  with  accompanying  demonstration,  which 

§ 4 B it  oni  on  may  inc^eec^  ke  true  or  taise — complete  or 
points  capable  °c3  conditional,  but  which  can  only  be  met  on 

demonstration.  . _ 

its  own  grounds,  and  can  m no  way  be 
borne  down  or  affected  by  mere  authority  of  great  names. 
Yet  even  thus  I should  scarcely  have  ventured  to  speak 
so  decidedly  as  I have,  but  for  my  full  conviction  that 
we  ought  not  to  class  the  historical  painters  of  the  fif- 
teenth, and  landscape  painters  of  the  seventeenth,  cen- 
turies, together,  under  the  general  title  of  “old  mas- 
ters,” as  if  they  possessed  anything  like  corresponding 
rank  in  their  respective  walks  of  art.  I feel  assured 
that  the  principles  on  which  they  worked  are  totally 
opposed,  and  that  the  landscape  painters  have  been  hon- 
ored only  because  they  exhibited  in  mechanical  and 
technical  qualities  some  semblance  of  the  manner  of 
the  nobler  historical  painters,  whose  principles  of  con- 
ception and  composition  they  entirely  reversed.  The 
course  of  study  which  has  led  me  reverently  to  the  feet 
of  Michael  Angelo  and  Da  Yinci,  has  alienated  me  grad- 
ually from  Claude  and  Gaspar — I cannot  at  the  same 
time  do  homage  to  power  and  pettiness — to  the  truth  of 
consummate  science,  and  the  mannerism  of  undisciplined 
imagination.  And  let  it  be  understood  that  whenever 


INTRODUCTORY. 


77 


hereafter  I speak  depreciatingly  of  the  old  masters  as 
a body,  I refer  to  none  of  the  historical  painters,  for 
whom  I entertain  a veneration,  which  though  I hope 
reasonable  in  its  grounds,  is  almost  superstitious  in 
degree.  Neither,  unless  he  be  particularly  mentioned,  do 
I intend  to  include  Nicholas  Poussin,  whose  landscapes 
have  a separate  and  elevated  character,  which  renders 
it  necessary  to  consider  them  apart  from  all  others. 
Speaking  generally  of  the  older  masters,  I refer  only  to 
Claude,  Gaspar,  Poussin,  Salvator  Rosa,  Cuyp,  Berghem, 
Both,  Ruysdael,  Hobbima,  Teniers,  (in  his  landscapes,) 
P.  Potter,  Canaletti,  and  the  various  Yan  somethings, 
and  Back  somethings,  more  especially  and  malignantly 
those  who  have  libelled  the  sea. 

It  will  of  course  be  necessary  for  me,  in  the  commence- 
ment of  the  work  to  state  briefly  those  principles  on 
which  I conceive  all  right  judgment  of  art  must  be 
founded.  These  introductory  chapters  I should  wish 
to  be  read  carefully,  because  all  criticism  must  be  use- 
less when  the  terms  or  grounds  of  it  are  in  any  degree 
ambiguous ; and  the  ordinary  language  of  connoisseurs 
and  critics,  granting  that  they  understand  it  themselves, 
is  usually  mere  jargon  to  others,  from  their  custom  of 
using  technical  terms,  by  which  everything  is  meant, 
and  nothing  is  expressed. 

And  if,  in  the  application  of  these  principles,  in  spite 
of  my  endeavor  to  render  it  impartial,  the  feeling  and 
fondness  which  I have  for  some  works  of  § 5>  The  author,g 
modem  art  escape  me  sometimes  where  ffworks^eSus- 
it  should  not,  let  it  be  pardoned  as  little  able- 
more  than  a fair  counterbalance  to  that  peculiar  venera- 
tion with  which  the  work  of  the  older  master,  associated 
as  it  has  ever  been  in  our  ears  with  the  expression  of 
whatever  is  great  or  perfect,  must  be  usually  regarded 
by  the  reader.  I do  not  say  that  this  veneration  is 
wrong,  nor  that  we  should  be  less  attentive  to  the  re- 


78 


INTRODUCTORY . 


peated  words  of  time : but  let  us  not  forget,  that  if  honor 
be  for  the  dead,  gratitude  can  only  be  for  the  living. 
He  who  has  once  stood  beside  the  grave,  to  look  back 
upon  the  companionship  which  has  been  forever  closed, 
feeling  how  impotent  there  are  the  wild  love,  or  the  keen 
sorrow,  to  give  one  instant’s  pleasure  to  the  pulseless 
heart,  or  atone  in  the  lowest  measure  to  the  departed 
spirit  for  the  hour  of  unkindness,  will  scarcely  for  the 
future  incur  that  debt  to  the  heart,  which  can  only  be 
discharged  to  the  dust.  But  the  lesson  which  men  re- 
ceive as  individuals,  they  do  not  learn  as  nations.  Again 
and  again  they  have  seen  their  noblest  descend  into  the 
grave,  and  have  thought  it  enough  to  garland  the  tomb- 
stone when  they  had  not  crowned  the  brow,  and  to  pay 
the  honor  to  the  ashes  which  they  had  denied  to  the  spirit. 
Let  it  not  displease  them  that  they  are  bidden,  amidst 
the  tumult  and  the  dazzle  of  their  busy  life,  to  listen  for 
the  few  voices,  and  watch  for  the  few  lamps,  which  God 
has  toned  and  lighted  to  charm  and  to  guide  them,  that 
they  may  not  learn  their  sweetness  by  their  silence,  nor 
their  light  by  their  decay. 


CHAPTEE  n. 


DEFINITION  OF  GREATNESS  IN  ART. 

In  the  15th  Lecture  of  Sir  Joshua  Eeynolds,  inciden- 
tal notice  is  taken  of  the  distinction  between  those  excel- 
lences in  the  painter  which  belong  to  him  as  such , and 
those  which  belong  to  him  in  common  ^ , 

§ 1.  Distinction  be- 

with  all  men  of  intellect,  the  general  and  tween  .the  pain- 

j intellectual 

exalted  powers  of  which  art  is  the  evi-  power  and  tech- 

t , . . . , i • i nical  knowledge. 

dence  and  expression,  not  the  subject. 

But  the  distinction  is  not  there  dwelt  upon  as  it  should 
be,  for  it  is  owing  to  the  slight  attention  ordinarily  paid 
to  it,  that  criticism  is  open  to  every  form  of  coxcombry, 
and  liable  to  every  phase  of  error.  It  is  a distinction  on 
which  depend  ail  sound  judgment  of  the  rank  of  the 
artist,  and  all  just  appreciation  of  the  dignity  of  art. 

Painting,  or  art  generally,  as  such,  with  all  its  tech- 
nicalities, difficulties,  and  particular  ends,  is  nothing  but 
a noble  and  expressive  language,  invalu-  g2.  painting,  as 
able  as  the  vehicle  of  thought,  but  by  ^ ^han^iSS 
itself  nothing.  He  who  has  learned  what  guage- 
is  commonly  considered  the  whole  art  of  painting,  that 
is,  the  art  of  representing  any  natural  object  faithfully, 
has  as  yet  only  learned  the  language  by  which  his 
thoughts  are  to  be  expressed.  He  has  done  just  as  much 
toward  being  that  which  we  ought  to  respect  as  a great 
painter,  as  a man  who  has  learned  how  to  express  himself 
grammatically  and  melodiously  has  towards  being  a 
great  poet.  The  language  is,  indeed,  more  difficult  of 
acquirement  in  the  one  case  than  in  the  other,  and  pos- 


80 


DEFINITION  OF  GREATNESS  IN  ART. 


sesses  more  power  of  delighting  the  sense,  while  it 
speaks  to  the  intellect,  but  it  is,  nevertheless,  nothing 
more  than  language,  and  all  those  excellences  which  are 
peculiar  to  the  painter  as  such,  are  merely  what  rhythm, 
melody,  precision  and  force  are  in  the  words  of  the 
orator  and  the  poet,  necessary  to  their  greatness,  but  not 
the  test  of  their  greatness.  It  is  not  by  the  mode  of 
representing  and  saying,  but  by  what  is  represented  and 
said,  that  the  respective  greatness  either  of  the  painter 
or  the  writer  is  to  be  finally  determined. 

Speaking  with  strict  propriety,  therefore,  we  should 
call  a man  a great  painter  only  as  he  excelled  in  pre- 
cision and  force  in  the  language  of  lines, 

§ 3.  “Painter  ” a ~ ~ 5 

term  correspond-  and  a great  versifier,  as  he  excelled  in  pre- 

mg  to  “ versifier.”  . . . , , , j*  t * 

cision  or  force  m the  language  of  words.  A 
great  poet  would  then  be  a term  strictly,  and  in  precisely 
the  same  sense  applicable  to  both,  if  warranted  by  the 
character  of  the  images  or  thoughts  which  each  in  their 
respective  languages  convey. 

Take,  for  instance,  one  of  the  most  perfect  poems  or 
pictures  (I  use  the  words  as  synonymous)  which  modern 
times  have  seen : — the  “ Old  Shepherd’s 

§ 4.  Example  m TT  . , ... 

i andseepf  °f  E*  kmief -mourner.  Here  the  exquisite  exe- 

cution of  the  glossy  and  crisp  hair  of  the 
dog,  the  bright,  sharp  touching  of  the  green  bough  be- 
side it,  the  clear  painting  of  the  wood  of  the  coffin  and 
the  folds  of  the  blanket,  are  language — language  clear 
and  expressive  in  the  highest  degree.  But  the  close 
pressure  of  the  dog’s  breast  against  the  wood,  the  con- 
vulsive clinging  of  the  paws,  which  has  dragged  the 
blanket  off  the  trestle,  the  total  powerlessness  of  the 
head  laid,  close  and  motionless,  upon  its  folds,  the  fixed 
and  tearful  fall  of  the  eye  in  its  utter  hopelessness,  the 
rigidity  of  repose  which  marks  that  there  has  been  no 
motion  nor  change  in  the  trance  of  agony  since  the  last 
blow  was  struck  on  the  coffin-lid,  the  quietness  and 


DEFINITION  OF  GREATNESS  IN  ART. 


81 


gloom  of  tlie  chamber,  the  spectacles  marking  the  place 
where  the  Bible  was  last  closed,  indicating  how  lonely 
has  been  the  life — how  nn watched  the  departure  of  him 
who  is  now  laid  solitary  in  his  sleep ; — these  are  all 
thoughts — thoughts  by  which  the  picture  is  separated  at 
once  from  hundreds  of  equal  merit,  as  far  as  mere  paint- 
ing goes,  by  which  it  ranks  as  a work  of  high  art,  and 
stamps  its  author,  not  as  the  neat  imitator  of  the  texture 
of  a skin,  or  the  fold  of  a drapery,  but  as  the  Man  of 
Mind. 

It  is  not,  however,  always  easy,  either  in  painting  or 
literature,  to  determine  where  the  influence  of  language 
stops,  and  where  that  of  thought  begins.  Many  thoughts 
are  so  dependent  upon  the  language  in  §6  Difficulty  of 
which  they  are  clothed,  that  they  would  gjjjs  between 
lose  half  their  beauty  if  otherwise  ex-  Jhoulhtage  and 
pressed.  But  the  highest  thoughts  are 
those  which  are  least  dependent  on  language,  and  the 
dignity  of  any  composition  and  praise  to  which  it  is  en- 
titled, are  in  exact  proportion  to  its  independency  of 
language  or  expression.  A composition  is  indeed  usu- 
ally most  perfect,  when  to  such  intrinsic  dignity  is 
added  all  that  expression  can  do  to  attract  and  adorn ; 
but  in  every  case  of  supreme  excellence  this  all  becomes 
as  nothing.  We  are  more  gratified  by  the  simplest  lines 
or  words  which  can  suggest  the  idea  in  its  own  naked 
beauty,  than  by  the  robe  or  the  gem  which  conceal  while 
they  decorate;  we  are  better  pleased  to  feel  by  their 
absence  how  little  they  could  bestow,  than  by  their  pres- 
ence how  much  they  can  destroy. 

There  is  therefore  a distinction  to  be  made  between 
■what  is  ornamental  in  language  and  what  is  expressive. 
That  part  of  it  which  is  necessary  to  the  § 6 Distillcti0I1 
embodying  and  conveying  the  thought  ^we®“d  elp?ca- 
is  worthy  of  respect  and  attention  as  Bive  laaguage. 
necessary  to  excellence,  though  not  the  test  of  it.  But 
6 


82 


DEFINITION  OF  GREATNESS  IN  ART. 


that  part  of  it  which  is  decorative  has  little  more  to  do 
with  the  intrinsic  excellence  of  the  picture  than  the 
frame  or  the  varnishing  of  it.  And  this  caution  in  dis- 
tinguishing between  the  ornamental  and  the  expressive 
is  peculiarly  necessary  in  painting ; for  in  the  language 
of  words  it  is  nearly  impossible  for  that  which  is  not 
expressive  to  be  beautiful,  except  by  mere  rhythm  or 
melody,  any  sacrifice  to  which  is  immediately  stigma- 
tized as  error.  But  the  beauty  of  mere  language  in 
painting  is  not  only  very  attractive  and  entertaining  to 
the  spectator,  but  requires  for  its  attainment  no  small 
exertion  of  mind  and  devotion  of  time  by  the  artist. 
Hence,  in  art,  men  have  frequently  fancied  that  they 
were  becoming  rhetoricians  and  poets  when  they  were 
only  learning  to  speak  melodiously,  and  the  judge  has 
over  and  over  again  advanced  to  the  honor  of  authors 
those  who  were  never  more  than  ornamental  writing- 
masters. 

Most  pictures  of  the  Dutch  school,  for  instance,  ex- 
cepting always  those  of  Rubens,  Vandyke,  and  Rem- 
g 7.  instance  in  brandt,  are  ostentatious  exhibitions  of  the 
?c,eri?utcthaiiaan2  artist’s  power  of  speech,  the  clear  and  vig- 
schooiS.  orous  elocution  of  useless  and  senseless 

words:  while  the  early  efforts  of  Cimabue  and  Giotto 
are  the  burning  messages  of  prophecy,  delivered  by  the 
stammering  lips  of  infants.  It  is  not  by  ranking  the 
former  as  more  than  mechanics,  or  the  latter  as  less  than 
artists,  that  the  taste  of  the  multitude,  always  awake  to 
the  lowest  pleasures  which  art  can  bestow,  and  blunt  to 
the  highest,  is  to  be  formed  or  elevated.  It  must  be  the 
part  of  the  judicious  critic  carefully  to  distinguish  what 
is  language,  and  what  is  thought,  and  to  rank  and  praise 
pictures  chiefly  for  the  latter,  considering  the  former  as 
a totally  inferior  excellence,  and  one  which  cannot  be 
compared  with  nor  weighed  against  thought  in  any  way 
nor  in  any  degree  whatsoever.  The  picture  which  has 


DEFINITION  OF  GREATNESS  IN  ART . 


83 


the  nobler  and  more  numerous  ideas,  however  awkwardly 
expressed,  is  a greater  and  a better  picture  than  that 
which  has  the  less  noble  and  less  numerous  ideas,  how- 
ever beautifully  expressed.  No  weight,  nor  mass,  nor 
beauty  of  execution  can  outweigh  one  grain  or  fragment 
of  thought.  Three  penstrokes  of  Bafiaelle  are  a greater 
and  a better  picture  than  the  most  finished  work  that 
ever  Carlo  Dolci  polished  into  inanity.  A finished  work 
of  a great  artist  is  only  better  than  its  sketch,  if  the 
sources  of  pleasure  belonging  to  color  and  realization — 
valuable  in  themselves, — are  so  employed  as  to  increase 
the  impressiveness  of  the  thought.  But  if  one  atom  of 
thought  has  vanished,  all  color,  all  finish,  all  execution,  all 
ornament,  are  too  dearly  bought.  Nothing  but  thought 
can  pay  for  thought,  and  the  instant  that  the  increasing 
refinement  or  finish  of  the  picture  begins  to  be  paid  for 
by  the  loss  of  the  faintest  shadow  of  an  idea,  that  instant 
all  refinement  or  finish  is  an  excrescence  and  a deformity. 

Yet  although  in  all  our  speculations  on  art,  language 
is  thus  to  be  distinguished  from,  and  held  subordinate 
to,  that  which  it  conveys,  we  must  still  remember  that 
there  are  certain  ideas  inherent  in  language  itself,  and 
that  strictly  speaking,  every  pleasure  con-  § 8.  Yet  there  are 
nected  with  art  has  in  it  some  reference  to  \ongSg 1 to^iaS 
the  intellect.  The  mere  sensual  pleasure  guage  iteeif • 
of  the  eye,  received  from  the  most  brilliant  piece  of  col- 
oring, is  as  nothing  to  that  which  it  receives  from  a 
crystal  prism,  except  as  it  depends  on  our  perception  of 
a certain  meaning  and  intended  arrangement  of  color, 
which  has  been  the  subject  of  intellect.  Nay,  the  term 
idea,  according  to  Locke’s  definition  of  it,  will  extend 
even  to  the  sensual  impressions  themselves  as  far  as 
they  are  “ things  which  the  mind  occupies  § 9 The  dedai_ 
itself  about  in  thinking,”  that  is,  not  as  tion- 
they  are  felt  by  the  eye  only,  but  as  they  are  received 
by  the  mind  through  the  eye.  So  that,  if  I say  that 


84 


DEFINITION  OF  GREATNESS  IN  ART. 


the  greatest  picture  is  that  which  conveys  to  the  mind 
of  the  spectator  the  greatest  number  of  the  greatest 
ideas,  I have  a definition  which  will  include  as  subjects 
of  comparison  every  pleasure  which  art  is  capable  of 
conveying.  If  I were  to  say,  on  the  contrary,  that  the 
best  picture  was  that  which  most  closely  imitated  nature, 
I should  assume  that  art  could  only  please  by  imitating 
nature,  and  I should  cast  out  of  the  pale  of  criticism  those 
parts  of  works  of  art  which  are  not  imitative,  that  is  to 
say,  intrinsic  beauties  of  color  and  form,  and  those  works 
of  art  wholly,  which,  like  the  arabesques  of  Baffaelle  in 
the  Loggias,  are  not  imitative  at  all.  Now  I want  a 
definition  of  art  wide  enough  to  include  all  its  varieties 
of  aim ; I do  not  say  therefore  that  the  art  is  greatest' 
which  gives  most  pleasure,  because  perhaps  there  is 
some  art  whose  end  is  to  teach,  and  not  to  please.  I do 
not  say  that  the  art  is  greatest  which  teaches  us  most, 
because  perhaps  there  is  some  art  whose  end  is  to 
please,  and  not  to  teach.  I do  not  say  that  the  art  is 
greatest  which  imitates  best,  because  perhaps  there  is 
some  art  whose  end  is  to  create,  and  not  to  imitate.  But 
I say  that  the  art  is  greatest,  which  conveys  to  the  mind 
of  the  spectator,  by  any  means  whatsoever,  the  greatest 
number  of  the  greatest  ideas,  and  I call  an  idea  great  in 
proportion  as  it  is  received  by  a higher  faculty  of  the 
mind,  and  as  it  more  fully  occupies,  and  in  occupying, 
exercises  and  exalts,  the  faculty  by  which  it  is  received. 

If  this  then  be  the  definition  of  great  art,  that  of  a 
great  artist  naturally  follows.  He  is  the  greatest  artist 
who  has  embodied,  in  the  sum  of  his  works,  the  greatest 
number  of  the  greatest  ideas. 


CHAPTER  HI. 


OF  IDEAS  OF  POWEB. 


of  ideas  are  con- 
veyable  by  art. 


The  definition  of  art  which  I have  just  given,  requires 
me  to  determine  what  kinds  of  ideas  can  be  received  from 
works  of  art,  and  which  of  these  are  the  greatest,  before 
proceeding  to  any  practical  application  of  g a What  claggeg 
the  test. 

I think  that  all  the  sources  of  pleasure, 
or  any  other  good,  to  be  derived  from  works  of  art,  may 
be  referred  to  five  distinct  heads. 

I.  Ideas  of  Power. — The  perception  or  conception 
of  the  mental  or  bodily  powers  by  which  the 
work  has  been  produced. 

II.  Ideas  of  Imitation. — The  perception  that  the  thing 
produced  resembles  something  else. 

III.  Ideas  of  Truth. — The  perception  of  faithfulness  in 
a statement  of  facts  by  the  thing  produced. 

IY.  Ideas  of  Beauty. — The  perception  of  beauty,  either 
in  the  thing  produced,  or  in  what  it  suggests 
or  resembles. 

Y.  Ideas  of  Relation. — The  perception  of  intellectual 
relations,  in  the  thing  produced,  or  in  what  it 
suggests  or  resembles. 

I shall  briefly  distinguish  the  nature  and  effects  of 
each  of  these  classes  of  ideas. 

I.  Ideas  of  Power. — These  are  the  simple  perception  of 
the  mental  or  bodily  powers  exerted  in  the  production 
of  any  work  of  art.  According  to  the  dig- 

•j  -a  i n . § 2.  Ideas  of  pow- 

nity  and  degree  ol  the  power  perceived  is  er  vary  much  in 
the  dignity  of  the  idea ; but  the  whole  class  relatiYe  dlgnity‘ 


86 


OF  IDEAS  OF  POWER . 


of  ideas  is  received  by  the  intellect,  and  they  excite  the 
best  of  the  moral  feelings,  veneration,  and  the  desire  of 
exertion.  As  a species,  therefore,  they  are  one  of  the 
noblest  connected  with  art ; but  the  differences  in  degree 
of  dignity  among  themselves  are  infinite,  being  corre- 
spondent with  every  order  of  power, — from  that  of  the 
fingers  to  that  of  the  most  exalted  intellect.  Thus,  when 
we  see  an  Indian’s  paddle  carved  from  the  handle  to  the 
blade,  we  have  a conception  of  prolonged  manual  labor, 
and  are  gratified  in  proportion  to  the  supposed  expendi- 
ture of  time  and  exertion.  These  are,  indeed,  powers  of 
a low  order,  yet  the  pleasure  arising  from  the  conception 
of  them  enters  very  largely  indeed  into  our  admiration 
of  all  elaborate  ornament,  architectural  decoration,  etc. 
The  delight  with  which  we  look  on  the  fretted  front  of 
Itouen  Cathedral  depends  in  no  small  degree  on  the  sim- 
ple perception  of  time  employed  and  labor  expended  in  its 
production.  But  it  is  a right,  that  is,  an  ennobling  pleas- 
ure even  in  this  its  lowest  phase ; and  even  the  pleasure 
felt  by  those  persons  who  praise  a drawing  for  its  “finish,” 
or  its  “ work,”  which  is  one  precisely  of  the  same  kind, 
would  be  right,  if  it  did  not  imply  a want  of  perception 
of  the  higher  powers  which  render  work  unnecessary.  If 
to  the  evidence  of  labor  be  added  that  of  strength  or 
dexterity,  the  sensation  of  power  is  yet  increased ; if  to 
strength  and  dexterity  be  added  that  of  ingenuity  and 
judgment,  it  is  multiplied  tenfold,  and  so  on,  through 
all  the  subjects  of  action  of  body  or  mind,  we  receive 
the  more  exalted  pleasure  from  the  more  exalted  power. 

So  far  the  nature  and  effects  of  ideas  of 
el 'fr(mawhatCever  power  cannot  but  be  admitted  by  all.  But 
ject  of  power.  The  the  circumstance  which  I wish  especially 
ex c ei-  to  insist  upon,  with  respect  to  them,  is  one 
which  may  not,  perhaps,  be  so  readily  al- 
lowed, namely,  that  they  are  independent  of  the  nature 
or  worthiness  of  the  object  from  which  they  are  received, 


OF  IDEAS  OF  POWER . 


87 


and  that  whatever  has  been  the  subject  of  a great  power, 
whether  there  be  intrinsic  and  apparent  worthiness  in 
itself  or  not,  bears  with  it  the  evidence  of  having*  been 
so,  and  is  capable  of  giving  the  ideas  of  power,  and  the 
consequent  pleasures,  in  their  full  degree.  For  observe, 
that  a thing  is  not  properly  said  to  have  been  the  result 
of  a great  power,  on  which  only  some  part  of  that  power 
has  been  expended.  A nut  may  be  cracked  by  a steam 
engine,  but  it  has  not,  in  being  so,  been  the  subject  of 
the  power  of  the  engine.  And  thus  it  is  falsely  said 
of  great  men,  that  they  waste  their  lofty  powers  on  un- 
worthy objects:  the  object  may  be  dangerous  or  useless, 
but,  as  far  as  the  phrase  has  reference  to  difficulty  of 
performance,  it  cannot  be  unworthy  of  the  power  which 
it  brings  into  exertion,  because  nothing  can  become  a 
subject  of  action  to  a greater  power  which  can  be  accom- 
plished by  a less,  any  more  than  bodily  strength  can  be 
exerted  where  there  is  nothing  to  resist  it. 

So  then,  men  may  let  their  great  powers  lie  dormant, 
while  they  employ  their  mean  and  petty  powers  on 
mean  and  petty  objects ; but  it  is  physically  impossible 
to  employ  a great  power,  except  on  a great  object.  Con- 
sequently, wherever  power  of  any  kind  or  degree  has 
been  exerted,  the  marks  and  evidence  of  it  are  stamped 
upon  its  results : it  is  impossible  that  it  should  be  lost 
or  wasted,  or  without  record,  even  in  the  “ estimation  of 
a hair : ” and  therefore,  whatever  has  been  the  subject  of 
a great  power  bears  about  with  it  the  image  of  that 
which  created  it,  and  is  what  is  commonly  called  “ excel- 
lent.” And  this  is  the  true  meaning  of  the  word  excel- 
lent, as  distinguished  from  the  terms  “beautiful,”  “use- 
ful,” “ good,”  etc. ; and  we  shall  always,  in  future,  use  the 
word  excellent,  as  signifying  that  the  thing  to  which  it 
is  applied  required  a great  power  for  its  production.* 

* Of  course  the  word  “excellent”  is  primarily  a mere  synonym 
with  “surpassing,”  and  when  applied  to  persons,  has  the  general 


88 


OF  IDEAS  OF  POWER . 


The  faculty  of  perceiving  what  powers  are  required 
for  the  production  of  a thing,  is  the  faculty  of  perceiving 
§4.  what  is  excellence.  It  is  this  faculty  in  which  men, 
dfsCtinSShir^  even  of  the  most  cultivated  taste,  must  al- 

exceiience.  ways  be  wanting,  unless  they  have  added 

practice  to  reflection;  because  none  can  estimate  the 
power  manifested  in  victory,  unless  they  have  personally 
measured  the  strength  to  be  overcome.  Though,  there- 
fore, it  is  possible,  by  the  cultivation  of  sensibility  and 
judgment,  to  become  capable  of  distinguishing  what  is 
beautiful,  it  is  totally  impossible,  without  practice  and 
knowledge,  to  distinguish  or  feel  what  is  excellent.  The 
beauty  or  the  truth  of  Titian’s  flesh-tint  may  be  appre- 
ciated by  all ; but  it  is  only  to  the  artist,  whose  multi- 
plied hours  of  toil  have  not  reached  the  slightest  resem- 
blance of  one  of  its  tones,  that  its  excellence  is  manifest. 

Wherever,  then,  difficulty  has  been  overcome,  there  is 
excellence : and  therefore,  in  order  to  prove  a work  ex- 
§ 5.  The  pleasure  cellent,  w e have  only  to  prove  the  difficulty 
queSngDdiffici5t£s  hs  production : whether  it  be  useful  or 
is  right.  beautiful  is  another  question;  its  excel- 

lence depends  on  its  difficulty  alone.  Nor  is  it  a false  or 
diseased  taste  which  looks  for  the  overcoming  of  difficul- 
ties, and  has  pleasure  in  it,  even  without  any  view  to  re- 
sultant good.  It  has  been  made  part  of  our  moral  nature 
that  we  should  have  a pleasure  in  encountering  and  con- 


meaning  given  by  Johnson — “the  state  of  abounding  in  any  good 
quality.”  But  when  applied  to  things  it  has  always  reference  to  the 
power  by  which  they  are  produced.  We  talk  of  excellent  music  or 
poetry,  because  it  is  difficult  to  compose  or  write  such,  but  never  of 
excellent  flowers,  because  all  flowers  being  the  result  of  the  same 
power,  must  be  equally  excellent.  We  distinguish  them  only  as  beau- 
tiful or  useful,  and  therefore,  as  there  is  no  other  one  word  to  signify 
that  quality  of  a thing  produced  by  which  it  pleases  us  merely  as  the 
result  of  power,  and  as  the  term  “ excellent” is  more  frequently  used 
in  this  sense  than  in  any  other,  I choose  to  limit  it  at  once  to  this  sense, 
and  I wish  it,  when  I use  it  in  future,  to  be  so  understood. 


OF  IDEAS  OF  POWER. 


89 


quering  opposition,  for  the  sake  of  the  struggle  and  the 
victory,  not  for  the  sake  of  any  after  result ; and  not  only 
our  own  victory,  but  the  perception  of  that  of  another,  is 
in  all  cases  the  source  of  pure  and  ennobling  pleasure. 
And  if  we  often  hear  it  said,  and  truly  said,  that  an  artist 
has  erred  by  seeking  rather  to  show  his  skill  in  overcom- 
ing technical  difficulties,  than  to  reach  a great  end,  be  it 
♦observed  that  he  is  only  blamed  because  he  has  sought 
to  conquer  an  inferior  difficulty  rather  than  a great  one ; 
for  it  is  much  easier  to  overcome  technical  difficulties 
than  to  reach  a great  end.  "Whenever  the  visible  vic- 
tory over  difficulties  is  found  painful  or  in  false  taste,  it 
is  owing  to  the  preference  of  an  inferior  to  a great  diffi- 
culty, or  to  the  false  estimate  of  what  is  difficult  and 
what  is  not.  It  is  far  more  difficult  to  be  simple  than  to 
be  complicated ; far  more  difficult  to  sacrifice  skill  and 
cease  exertion  in  the  proper  place,  than  to  expend  both 
indiscriminately.  We  shall  find,  in  the  course  of  our  in- 
vestigation, that  beauty  and  difficulty  go  together ; and 
that  they  are  only  mean  and  paltry  difficulties  which  it 
is  wrong  or  contemptible  to  wrestle  with.  Be  it  remem- 
bered then — Power  is  never  wasted.  Whatever  power 
has  been  employed,  produces  excellence  in  proportion 
to  its  own  dignity  and  exertion ; and  the  faculty  of  per- 
ceiving this  exertion,  and  appreciating  this  dignity,  is 
the  faculty  of  perceiving  excellence. 


CHAPTER  IY. 


OF  IDEAS  OF  IMITATION. 

Fuseli,  in  his  lectures,  and  many  other  persons  of 
equally  just  and  accurate  habits  of  thought,  (among 
§ i.  False  use  of  others,  S.  T.  Coleridge,)  make  a distinc- 
Uon^y'many  ^on  between  imitation  and  copying,  rep- 
wnters  of  art.  resenting  the  first  as  the  legitimate  func- 

tion of  art — the  latter  as  its  corruption ; but  as  such  a 
distinction  is  by  no  means  warranted,  or  explained  by 
the  common  meaning  of  the  words  themselves,  it  is  not 
easy  to  comprehend  exactly  in  what  sense  they  are  used 
by  those  writers.  And  though,  reasoning  from  the  con- 
text, I can  understand  what  ideas  those  words  stand  for 
in  their  minds,  I cannot  allow  the  terms  to  be  properly 
used  as  symbols  of  those  ideas,  which  (especially  in  the 
case  of  the  word  Imitation)  are  exceedingly  complex, 
and  totally  different  from  what  most  people  would  un- 
derstand by  the  term.  And  by  men  of  less  accurate 
thought,  the  word  is  used  still  more  vaguely  or  falsely. 
For  instance,  Burke  (“  Treatise  on  the  Sublime,”  part  i. 
sect.  16)  says,  “When  the  object  represented  in  poetry 
or  painting  is  such  as  we  could  have  no  desire  of  seeing* 
in  the  reality,  then  we  may  be  sure  that  its  power  in 
poetry  or  painting  is  owing  to  the  power  of  imitation” 
In  which  case  the  real  pleasure  may  be  in  what  we  have 
been  just  speaking  of,  the  dexterity  of  the  artist’s  hand ; 
or  it  may  be  in  a beautiful  or  singular  arrangement  of 
colors,  or  a thoughtful  chiaroscuro,  or  in  the  pure  beauty 
of  certain  forms  which  art  forces  on  our  notice,  though 


OF  IDEAS  OF  IMITATION. 


91 


we  should  not  have  observed  them  in  the  reality  ; and  I 
conceive  that  none  of  these  sources  of  pleasure  are  in 
any  way  expressed  or  intimated  by  the  term  “imita- 
tion.” 

But  there  is  one  source  of  pleasure  in  works  of  art 
totally  different  from  all  these,  which  I conceive  to  be 
properly  and  accurately  expressed  by  the  word  “ imita- 
tion : ” one  which,  though  constantly  confused  in  reason- 
ing, because  it  is  always  associated  in  fact,  with  other 
means  of  pleasure,  is  totally  separated  from  them  in  its 
nature,  and  is  the  real  basis  of  whatever  complicated  or 
various  meaning  may  be  afterward  attached  to  the  word 
in  the  minds  of  men. 

I wish  to  point  out  this  distinct  source  of  pleasure 
clearly  at  once,  and  only  to  use  the  word  “ imitation  ” in 
reference  to  it. 

Whenever  anything  looks  like  what  it  is  not,  the  re- 
semblance being  so  great  as  nearly  to  deceive,  we  feel  a 
kind  of  pleasurable  surprise,  an  agreeable  § 2.  Reai  meaning 
excitement  of  mind,  exactly  the  same  in  oftheterm- 
its  nature  as  that  which  we  receive  from  juggling'. 
Whenever  we  perceive  this  in  something  produced  by 
art,  that  is  to  say,  whenever  the  work  is  seen  to  resemble 
something  which  we  know  it  is  not,  we  receive  what  I 
call  an  idea  of  imitation.  Why  such  ideas  are  pleasing, 
it  would  be  out  of  our  present  purpose  to  inquire ; we 
only  know  that  there  is  no  man  who  does  not  feel  pleasure 
in  his  animal  nature  from  gentle  surprise,  and  that  such 
surprise  can  be  excited  in  no  more  distinct  manner  than 
by  the  evidence  that  a thing  is  not  what  it  appears  to 
be.*  Now  two  things  are  requisite  to  our 

I * -i  , , . . § 3.  What  is  req- 

complete  and  more  pleasurable  perception  mate  to  ae  sense 
of  this:  first,  that  the  resemblance  be  so  of inutati<ra- 
perfect  as  to  amount  to  a deception ; secondly,  that  there 


* ov\\oyi&/ivs  eTTry,  on  tovto  e/ceivo. — Al’ist.  Rliet.  1,  11,  23. 


92 


OF  IDEAS  OF  IMITATION. 


be  some  means  of  proving  at  the  same  moment  that  it 
is  a deception.  The  most  perfect  ideas  and  pleasures  of 
imitation  are,  therefore,  when  one  sense  is  contradicted 
by  another,  both  bearing  as  positive  evidence  on  the 
subject  as  each  is  capable  of  alone;  as  when  the  eye 
says  a thing  is  round,  and  the  finger  says  it  is  flat ; they 
are,  therefore,  never  felt  in  so  high  a degree  as  in  paint- 
ing, where  appearance  of  projection,  roughness,  hair, 
velvet,  etc.,  are  given  with  a smooth  surface,  or  in  wax- 
work,  where  the  first  evidence  of  the  senses  is  perpetually 
contradicted  by  their  experience;  but  the  moment  we 
come  to  marble,  our  definition  checks  us,  for  a marble 
figure  does  not  look  like  what  it  is  not : it  looks  like 
marble,  and  like  the  form  of  a man,  but  then  it  is  marble, 
and  it  is  the  form  of  a man.  It  does  not  look  like  a man, 
which  it  is  not,  but  like  the  form  of  a man,  which  it  is. 
Form  is  form,  bona  fide  and  actual,  whether  in  marble  or 
in  flesh — not  an  imitation  or  resemblance  of  form,  but 
real  form.  The  chalk  outline  of  the  bough  of  a tree  on 
£japer,  is  not  an  imitation ; it  looks  like  chalk  and  paper 
— not  like  wood,  and  that  which  it  suggests  to  the  mind 
is  not  properly  said  to  be  like  the  form  of  a bough,  it  is 
the  form  of  a bough.  Now,  then,  we  see  the  limits  of  an 
idea  of  imitation ; it  extends  only  to  the  sensation  of 
trickery  and  deception  occasioned  by  a thing’s  intention- 
ally seeming  different  from  what  it  is ; and  the  degree  of 
the  pleasure  depends  on  the  degree  of  difference  and  the 
perfection  of  the  resemblance,  not  on  the  nature  of  the 
thing  resembled.  The  simple  pleasure  in  the  imitation 
would  be  precisely  of  the  same  degree,  (if  the  accuracy 
could  be  equal,)  whether  the  subject  of  it  were  the  hero 
or  his  horse.  There  are  other  collateral  sources  of  pleas- 
ure, which  are  necessarily  associated  with  this,  but  that 
part  of  the  pleasure  which  depends  on  the  imitation  is 
the  same  in  both. 

Ideas  of  imitation,  then,  act  by  producing  the  simple 


OF  IDEAS  OF  IMITATION . 


93 


contemptible  that 
can  be  derived 
from  art. 


pleasure  of  surprise,  and  that  not  of  surprise  in  its  high- 
est sense  and  function,  but  of  the  mean  and  paltry  sur- 
prise which  is  felt  in  jugglery.  These  § 4.  The  pleasure 
ideas  and  pleasures  are  the  most  contempt-  So^tS^no^t 
iGle  which  can  be  received  from  art ; first, 
because  it  is  necessary  to  their  enjoyment 
that  the  mind  should  reject  the  impression  and  address  of 
the  thing  represented,  and  fix  itself  only  upon  the  reflec- 
tion that  it  is  not  what  it  seems  to  be.  All  high  or  noble 
emotion  or  thought  are  thus  rendered  physically  impos- 
sible, while  the  mind  exults  in  what  is  very  like  a strictly 
sensual  pleasure.  We  may  consider  tears  as  a result  of 
agony  or  of  art,  whichever  we  please,  but  not  of  both  at 
the  same  moment.  If  we  are  surprised  by  them  as  an 
attainment  of  the  one,  it  is  impossible  we  can  be  moved 
by  them  as  a sign  of  the  other. 

Ideas  of  imitation  are  contemptible  in  the  second 
place,  because  not  only  do  they  preclude  the  spectator 
from  enjoying  inherent  beauty  in  the  sub- 

. , -i  1 p.  6 -I  -I  J „ §5.  Imitation  is 

iect,  but  tiiey  can  only  be  received  from  only  of  contempt- 
J ’ T l i i • i.  i • • ible  subjects. 

mean  and  paltry  subjects,  because  it  is  im- 
possible to  imitate  anything  really  great.  We  can 
“ paint  a cat  or  a fiddle,  so  that  they  look  as  if  we  could 
take  them  up ; ” but  we  cannot  imitate  the  ocean,  or  the 
Alps.  We  can  imitate  fruit,  but  not  a tree ; flowers,  but 
not  a pasture ; cut-glass,  but  not  the  rainbow.  All  pict- 
ures in  which  deceptive  powers  of  imitation  are  dis- 
played are  therefore  either  of  contemptible  subjects,  or 
have  the  imitation  shown  in  contemptible  parts  of  them, 
bits  of  dress,  jewels,  furniture,  etc. 

Thirdly,  these  ideas  are  contemptible,  because  no  ideas 
of  power  are  associated  with  them  ; to  the  ignorant,  imi- 
tation, indeed,  seems  difficult,  and  its  suc- 

. , . , , § 6.  Imitation  is 

cess  praiseworthy,  but  even  they  can  oy  contemptible  be- 

.,  ..  i ,•]  cause  it  is  easy. 

no  possibility  see  more  m the  artist  than 

they  do  in  a juggler,  who  arrives  at  a strange  end  by 


94 


OF  IDEAS  OF  IMITATION. 


means  with  which  they  are  unacquainted.  To  the  in- 
structed, the  juggler  is  by  far  the  more  respectable  artist 
of  the  two,  for  they  know  sleight  of  hand  to  be  an  art  of 
immensely  more  difficult  acquirement,  and  to  imply  more 
ingenuity  in  the  artist  than  a power  of  deceptive  imita- 
tion in  painting,  which  requires  nothing  more  for  its  at- 
tainment than  a true  eye,  a steady  hand,  and  moderate 
industry — qualities  which  in  no  degree  separate  the  imi- 
tative artist  from  a watch-maker,  pin-maker,  or  any  other 
neat-handed  artificer.  These  remarks  do  not  apply  to 
the  art  of  the  Diorama,  or  the  stage,  where  the  pleasure 
is  not  dependent  on  the  imitation,  but  is  the  same  which 
we  should  receive  from  nature  herself,  only  far  inferior  in 
degree.  It  is  a noble  pleasure ; but  we  shall  see  in  the 
course  of  our  investigation,  both  that  it  is  inferior  to 
that  which  we  receive  when  there  is  no  deception  at  all, 
and  why  it  is  so. 

"Whenever  then  in  future,  I speak  of  ideas  of  imita- 
tion, I wish  to  be  understood  to  mean  the  immediate  and 
§ 7.  Kecapituia-  Present  perception  that  something  pro- 
tlon-  duced  by  art  is  not  what  it  seems  to  be. 

I prefer  saying  “ that  it  is  not  what  it  seems  to  be,”  to 
saying  “ that  it  seems  to  be  what  it  is  not,”  because  we 
perceive  at  once  what  it  seems  to  be,  and  the  idea  of 
imitation,  and  the  consequent  pleasure,  result  from  the 
subsequent  perception  of  its  being  something  else — flat, 
for  instance,  when  we  thought  it  was  round. 


CHAPTER  Y. 


OF  IDEAS  OF  TKUTH. 

The  word  truth,  as  applied  to  art,  signifies  the  faith- 
ful statement,  either  to  the  mind  or  senses,  of  any  fact 
of  nature.  e „ __  . 

. . , § 1.  Meaning  of 

We  receive  an  idea  of  truth,  then,  when  the  word  “truth” 

» ! as  applied  to  art. 

we  perceive  the  faithfulness  of  such  a 
statement.  The  difference  between  ideas  of  truth  and 
of  imitation  lies  chiefly  in  the  following  points. 

First, — Imitation  can  only  be  of  something  material, 
but  truth  has  reference  to  statements  both  of  the  quali 
ties  of  material  things,  and  of  emotions,  §2.  First  differ- 
impressions,  and  thoughts.  There  is  a truth6  and* hStf 
moral  as  well  as  material  truth, — a truth  of  tl0n‘ 
impression  as  well  as  of  form,— of  thought  as  well  as  of 
matter ; and  the  truth  of  impression  and  thought  is  a 
thousand  times  the  more  important  of  the  two.  Hence, 
truth  is  a term  of  universal  application,  but  imitation  is 
limited,  to  that  narrow  field  of  art  which  takes  cogni- 
zance only  of  material  things. 

Secondly, — Truth  may  be  stated  by  any  signs  or  sym- 
bols which  have  a definite  signification  in  the  minds  of 
those  to  whom  they  are  addressed,  al-  § 3 gecond  aiffer- 
though  such  signs  be  themselves  no  image  ence- 
nor  likeness  of  anything.  Whatever  can  excite  in  the 
mind  the  conception  of  certain  facts,  can  give  ideas  of 
truth,  though  it  be  in  no  degree  the  imitation  or  resem- 
blance of  those  facts.  If  there  be — we  do  not  say  there 
is — but  if  there  be  in  painting  anything  which  operates, 


96 


OF  IDEAS  OF  TRUTH . 


as  words  do,  not  by  resembling  anything,  but  by  being 
taken  as  a symbol  and  substitute  for  it,  and  thus  induc- 
ing the  effect  of  it,  then  this  channel  of  communication 
can  convey  uncorrupted  truth,  though  it  do  not  in  any 
degree  resemble  the  facts  whose  conception  it  induces. 
But  ideas  of  imitation,  of  course,  require  the  likeness  of 
the  object.  They  speak  to  the  perceptive  faculties  only : 
truth  to  the  conceptive. 

Thirdly, — And  in  consequence  of  what  is  above  stated, 
an  idea  of  truth  exists  in  the  statement  of  one  attribute 
§4.  Third  differ-  of  anything,  but  an  idea  of  imitation  re- 
ence*  quires  the  resemblance  of  as  many  attri- 

butes as  we  are  usually  cognizant  of  in  its  real  presence. 
A pencil  outline  of  the  bough  of  a tree  on  white  paper 
is  a statement  of  a certain  number  of  facts  of  form.  It 
does  not  yet  amount  to  the  imitation  of  anything.  The 
idea  of  that  form  is  not  given  in  nature  by  lines  at  all, 
still  less  by  black  lines  with  a white  . space  between 
them.  But  those  lines  convey  to  the  mind  a distinct 
impression  of  a certain  number  of  facts,  which  it  recog- 
nizes as  agreeable  with  its  previous  impressions  of  the 
bough  of  a tree ; and  it  receives,  therefore,  an  idea  of 
truth.  If,  instead  of  two  lines,  we  give  a dark  form  with 
the  brush,  we  convey  information  of  a certain  relation  of 
shade  between  the  bough  and  sky,  recognizable  for  an- 
other idea  of  truth ; but  we  have  still  no  imitation,  for 
the  white  paper  is  not  the  least  like  air,  nor  the  black 
shadow  like  wood.  It  is  not  until  after  a certain  number 
of  ideas  of  truth  have  been  collected  together,  that  we 
arrive  at  an  idea  of  imitation. 

Hence  it  might  at  first  sight  appear,  that  an  idea  of 
imitation,  inasmuch  as  several  ideas  of  truth  were  united 
in  it,  was  nobler  than  a simple  idea  of 

§5.  No  accurate  . n „ ..  n . 

truth^necessary  truth.  And  if  it  were  necessary  that  the 
ideas  of  truth  should  be  perfect,  or  should 
be  subjects  of  contemplation  as  such , it  would  be  so. 


OF  IDEAS  OF  TRUTH. 


97 


But,  observe,  we  require  to  produce  the  effect  of  imita- 
tion only  so  many  and  such  ideas  of  truth  as  the  senses 
are  usually  cognizant  of.  Now  the  senses  are  not  usu- 
ally, nor  unless  they  be  especially  devoted  to  the  ser- 
vice, cognizant,  with  accuracy,  of  any  truths  but  those  of 
space  and  projection.  It  requires  long  study  and  atten- 
tion before  they  give  certain  evidence  of  even  the  sim- 
plest truths  of  form.  For  instance,  the  quay  on  which 
the  figure  is  sitting,  with  his  hand  at  his  eyes,  in 
Claude’s  seaport,  No.  14,  in  the  National  Gallery,  is 
egregiously  out  of  perspective.  The  eye  of  this  artist, 
with  all  his  study,  had  thus  not  acquired  the  power  of 
taking  cognizance  of  the  apparent  form  even  of  a simple 
parallelopiped.  How  much  less  of  the  complicated 
forms  of  boughs,  leaves,  or  limbs  ? Although,  therefore, 
something  resembling  the  real  form  is  necessary  to  de- 
ception, this  something  is  not  to  be  called  a truth  of 
form ; for,  strictly  speaking,  there  are  no  degrees  of 
truth,  there  are  only  degrees  of  approach  to  it ; and  an 
approach  to  it,  whose  feebleness  and  imperfection  would 
instantly  offend  and  give  pain  to  a mind  really  capable 
of  distinguishing  truth,  is  yet  quite  sufficient  for  all  the 
purposes  of  deceptive  imagination.  It  is  the  same  with 
regard  to  color.  If  we  were  to  paint  a tree  sky-blue,  or 
a dog  rose-pink,  the  discernment  of  the  public  would  be 
keen  enough  to  discover  the  falsehood  ; but,  so  that  there 
be  just  so  much  approach  to  truth  of  color  as  may  come 
up  to  the  common  idea  of  it  in  men’s  minds,  that  is  to 
say,  if  the  trees  be  all  bright  green,  and  flesh  unbroken 
buffi,  and  ground  unbroken  brown,  though  all  the  real  and 
refined  truths  of  color  be  wholly  omitted,  or  rather  defied 
and  contradicted,  there  is  yet  quite  enough  for  all  pur- 
poses of  imitation.  The  only  facts  then,  which  we  are 
usually  and  certainly  cognizant  of,  are  those  of  distance 
and  projection,  and  if  these  be  tolerably  given,  with 
something  like  truth  of  form  and  color  to  assist  them, 
7 


98 


OF  IDEAS  OF  TRUTH. 


the  idea  of  imitation  is  complete.  I would  undertake  to 
paint  an  arm,  with  every  muscle  out  of  its  place,  and 
every  bone  of  false  form  and  dislocated  articulation,  and 
yet  to  observe  certain  coarse  and  broad  resemblances  of 
true  outline,  which,  with  careful  shading-,  would  induce 
deception,  and  draw  down  the  praise  and  delight  of  the 
discerning  public.  The  other  day  at  Bruges,  while  I was 
endeavoring  to  set  down  in  my  note-book  something  of 
the  ineffable  expression  of  the  Madonna  in  the  cathe- 
dral, a French  amateur  came  up  to  me,  to  inquire  if  I 
had  seen  the  modern  French  pictures  in  a neighboring 
church.  I had  not,  but  felt  little  inclined  to  leave  my 
marble  for  all  the  canvas  that  ever  suffered  from  French 
brushes.  My  apathy  was  attacked  with  gradually  in- 
creasing energy  of  praise.  Rubens  never  executed — 
Titian  never  colored  anything  like  them.  I thought  this 
highly  probable,  and  still  sat  quiet.  The  voice  contin- 
ued at  my  ear.  “ Parbleu,  Monsieur,  Michel- Ange  n’a 
rien  produit  de  plus  beau  ! ” “ De  plus  beau  ? ” repeated 

I,  wishing  to  know  what  particular  excellences  of  Mi- 
chael Angelo  were  to  be  intimated  by  this  expression. 
“ Monsieur,  on  ne  peut  plus — c’est  un  tableau  admi- 
rable— inconcevable : Monsieur,”  said  the  Frenchman, 
lifting  up  his  hands  to  heaven,  as  he  concentrated  in 
one  conclusive  and  overwhelming  proposition  the  quali- 
ties which  were  to  outshine  Rubens  and  overpower 
Buonaroti — “ Monsieur,  il  sort  ! ” 

This  gentleman  could  only  perceive  two  truths — flesh 
color  and  projection.  These  constituted  his  notion  of 
the  perfection  of  painting ; because  they  unite  all  that 
is  necessary  for  deception.  He  was  not  therefore  cog- 
nizant of  many  ideas  of  truth,  though  perfectly  cogni- 
zant of  ideas  of  imitation. 

g e ideas  of  truth  We  see>  in  the  course  of  our  investi- 

with  ideas^f  taS-  g^i011  of  ideas  of  truth,  that  ideas  of  imi- 
tation-  tation  not  only  do  not  imply  their  pres- 


OF  IDEAS  OF  TRUTH. 


99 


ence,  but  even  are  inconsistent  with  it ; and  that  pictures 
which  imitate  so  as  to  deceive,  are  never  true.  But  this  is 
not  the  place  for  the  proof  of  this ; at  present  we  have 
only  to  insist  on  the  last  and  greatest  distinction  between 
ideas  of  truth  and  of  imitation — that  the  mind,  in  receiv- 
ing one  of  the  former,  dwells  upon  its  own  conception  of 
the  fact,  or  form,  or  feeling  stated,  and  is  occupied  only 
with  the  qualities  and  character  of  that  fact  or  form,  con- 
sidering it  as  real  and  existing,  being  all  the  while  totally 
regardless  of  the  signs  or  symbols  by  which  the  notion  of 
it  has  been  conveyed.  These  signs  have  no  pretence,  nor 
hypocrisy,  nor  legerdemain  about  them ; — there  is  noth- 
ing to  be  found  out,  or  sifted,  or  surprised  in  them ; — they 
bear  their  message  simply  and  clearly,  and  it  is  that 
message  which  the  mind  takes  from  them  and  dwells 
upon,  regardless  of  the  language  in  which  it  is  delivered. 
But  the  mind,  in  receiving  an  idea  of  imitation,  is  wholly 
occupied  in  finding  out  that  what  has  been  suggested  to 
it  is  not  what  it  appears  to  be : it  does  not  dwell  on  the 
suggestion,  but  on  the  perception  that  it  is  a false  sug- 
gestion : it  derives  its  pleasure,  not  from  the  contempla- 
tion of  a truth,  but  from  the  discovery  of  a falsehood. 
Bo  that  the  moment  ideas  of  truth  are  grouped  together, 
so  as  to  give  rise  to  an  idea  of  imitation,  they  change 
their  very  nature — lose  their  essence  as  ideas  of  truth — 
and  are  corrupted  and  degraded,  so  as  to  share  in  the 
treachery  of  what  they  have  produced.  Hence,  finally, 
ideas  of  truth  are  the  foundation,  and  ideas  of  imitation 
the  destruction,  of  all  art.  We  shall  be  better  able  to 
appreciate  their  relative  dignity  after  the  investigation 
which  we  propose  of  the  functions  of  the  former ; but 
we  may  as  well  now  express  the  conclusion  to  which  we 
shall  then  be  led — that  no  picture  can  be  good  which 
deceives  by  its  imitation,  for  the  very  reason  that  noth- 
ing can  be  beautiful  which  is  not  true. 


CHAPTER  YI. 


OF  IDEAS  OF  BEAUTY. 

Any  material  object  which  can  give  us  pleasure  in  the 
simple  contemplation  of  its  outward  qualities  without  any 
direct  and  definite  exertion  of  the  intellect,  I call  in  some 
_ . way,  or  in  some  degree,  beautiful.  Why 

the  term  “ beau-  we  receive  pleasure  from  some  forms  and 
colors,  and  not  from  others,  is  no  more  to 
be  asked  or  answered  than  why  we  like  sugar  and  dislike 
wormwood.  The  utmost  subtilty  of  investigation  will 
only  lead  us  to  ultimate  instincts  and  principles  of  hu- 
man nature,  for  which  no  farther  reason  can  be  given 
than  the  simple  will  of  the  Deity  that  we  should  be  so 
created.  We  may,  indeed,  perceive,  as  far  as  we  are  ac- 
quainted with  His  nature,  that  we  have  been  so  con- 
structed as,  when  in  a healthy  and  cultivated  state  of 
mind,  to  derive  pleasure  from  whatever  things  are  illus- 
trative of  that  nature ; but  we  do  not  receive  pleasure 
from  them  because  they  are  illustrative  of  it,  nor  from 
any  perception  that  they  are  illustrative  of  it,  but  in- 
stinctively and  necessarily,  as  we  derive  sensual  pleasure 
from  the  scent  of  a rose.  On  these  primary  principles 
of  our  nature,  education  and  accident  operate  to  an  un- 
limited extent ; they  may  be  cultivated  or  checked,  di- 
rected or  diverted,  gifted  by  right  guidance  with  the 
most  acute  and  faultless  sense,  or  subjected  by  neglect 
to  every  phase  of  error  and  disease.  He  who  has  fol- 
lowed up  these  natural  laws  of  aversion  and  desire,  ren- 
dering them  more  and  more  authoritative  by  constant 


OF  IDEAS  OF  BEAUTY. 


101 


obedience,  so  as  to  derive  pleasure  always  from  that 
which  God  originally  intended  should  give  him  pleasure, 
and  who  derives  the  greatest  possible  sum  of  pleasure 
from  any  given  object,  is  a man  of  taste. 

This,  then,  is  the  real  meaning  of  this  disputed  word. 
Perfect  taste  is  the  faculty  of  receiving  the  greatest  pos- 
sible pleasure  from  those  material  sources  § 2 DefiIlition  of 
which  are  attractive  to  our  moral  nature  in  theterm  “taste.” 
its  purity  and  perfection.  He  who  receives  little  pleas- 
ure from  these  sources,  wants  taste ; he  who  receives 
pleasure  from  any  other  sources,  has  false  or  bad 
taste. 

And  it  is  thus  that  the  term  “ taste  ” is  to  be  distin- 
guished from  that  of  “ judgment,”  with  which  it  is  con- 
stantly confounded  Judgment  is  a gen-  _ ■ „ 

eral  term,  expressing  definite  action  ox  the  tetweenjaste  and 
intellect,  and  applicable  to  every  kind  of 
subject  which  can  be  submitted  to  it.  There  may  be 
judgment  of  congruity,  judgment  of  truth,  judgment 
of  justice,  and  judgment  of  difficulty  and  excellence. 
But  all  these  exertions  of  the  intellect  are  totally 
distinct  from  taste,  properly  so  called,  which  is  the 
instinctive  and  instant  preferring  of  one  material  ob- 
ject to  another  without  any  obvious  reason,  except 
that  it  is  proper  to  human  nature  in  its  perfection  so 
to  do. 

Observe,  however,  I do  not  mean  by  excluding  direct 
exertion  of  the  intellect  from  ideas  of  beauty,  to  assert 
that  beauty  has  no  effect  upon  nor  connec-  4 
tion  with  the  intellect.  All  our  moral  beauty  may  be- 

,,  , . . . . . come  intellectual. 

ieeimgs  are  so  inwoven  with  our  intellect- 
ual powers,  that  we  cannot  affect  the  one  without  in 
some  degree  addressing  the  other ; and  in  all  high  ideas 
of  beauty,  it  is  more  than  probable  that  much  of  the 
pleasure  depends  on  delicate  and  untraceable  percep- 
tions of  fitness,  propriety,  and  relation,  which  are  pure- 


102 


OF  IDEAS  OF  BEAUTY. 


ly  intellectual,  and  through  which  we  arrive  at  our 
noblest  ideas  of  what  is  commonly  and  rightly  called 
“ intellectual  beauty.”  But  there  is  yet  no  immediate 
exertion  of  the  intellect ; that  is  to  say,  if  a person  receiv- 
ing even  the  noblest  ideas  of  simple  beauty  be  asked 
why  he  likes  the  object  exciting  them,  he  will  not  be 
able  to  give  any  distinct  reason,  nor  to  trace  in  his  mind 
any  formed  thought,  to  which  he  can  appeal  as  a source 
of  pleasure.  He  will  say  that  the  thing  gratifies,  fills, 
hallows,  exalts  his  mind,  but  he  will  not  be  able  to  say 
why,  or  how.  If  he  can,  and  if  he  can  show  that  he  per- 
ceives in  the  object  any  expression  of  distinct  thought, 
he  has  received  more  than  an  idea  of  beauty — it  is  an 
idea  of  relation. 

Ideas  of  beauty  are  among  the  noblest  which  can  be 
presented  to  the  human  mind,  invariably  exalting  and 
purifying  it  according  to  their  degree;  and  it  would 
appear  that  we  are  intended  by  the  Deity  to  be  constant- 
§ 5 The  high  ^ under  their  influence,  because  there  is 
rank  and  function  not  one  single  object  in  nature  which  is 

of  ideas  of  beauty.  , , ” . , 

not  capable  of  conveying  them,  and  which, 
to  the  rightly  perceiving  mind,  does  not  present  an  in- 
calculably greater  number  of  beautiful  than  of  deformed 
parts;  there  being  in  fact  scarcely  anything,  in  pure, 
undiseased  nature,  like  positive  deformity,  but  only 
degrees  of  beauty,  or  such  slight  and  rare  points  of  per- 
mitted contrast  as  may  render  all  around  them  more 
valuable  by  their  opposition,  spots  of  blackness  in 
creation,  to  make  its  colors  felt. 

But  although  everything  in  nature  is  more  or  less 
beautiful,  every  species  of  object  has  its  own  kind  and 
degree  of  beauty ; some  being  in  their  own 
the  termni-fdeai  nature  more  beautiful  than  others,  and  few, 
if  any,  individuals  possessing  the  utmost 
degree  of  beauty  of  which  the  species  is  capable.  This 
utmost  degree  of  specific  beauty,  necessarily  coexistent 


OF  IDEAS  OF  BEAUTY. 


103 


with  the  utmost  perfection  of  the  object  in  other  re- 
spects,  is  the  ideal  of  the  object. 

Ideas  of  beauty,  then,  be  it  remembered,  are  the  sub- 
jects of  moral,  but  not  of  intellectual,  perception.  By 
the  investigation  of  them  we  shall  be  led  to  the  knowh 
edge  of  the  ideal  subjects  of  art. 


CHAPTER  VEL 


OF  IDEAS  OF  RELATION. 

I use  this  term  rather  as  one  of  convenience  than  as 
adequately  expressive  of  the  vast  class  of  ideas  which  I 
wish  to  be  comprehended  under  it,  namely,  all  those 
§1.  General  mean-  conveyable  by  art,  which  are  the  subjects 
ing  of  the  term.  Qf  distinct  intellectual  perception  and  ac- 
tion, and  which  are  therefore  worthy  of  the  name  of 
thoughts.  But  as  every  thought,  or  definite  exertion  of 
intellect,  implies  two  subjects,  and  some  connection  or 
relation  inferred  between  them,  the  term  “ ideas  of  re- 
lation ” is  not  incorrect,  though  it  is  inexpressive. 

Under  this  head  must  be  arranged  everything  pro- 
ductive of  expression,  sentiment,  and  character,  whether 
„ „ TTTt.  A in  figures  or  landscapes,  (for  there  may  be 
hend-dbundc?Sre"  as  mucn  definite  expression  and  marked 
carrying  out  of  particular  thoughts  in  the 
treatment  of  inanimate  as  of  animate  nature,)  every- 
thing relating  to  the  conception  of  the  subject  and 
to  the  congruity  and  relation  of  its  parts ; not  as  they 
enhance  each  other’s  beauty  by  known  and  constant  laws 
of  composition,  but  as  they  give  each  other  expression 
and  meaning,  by  particular  application,  requiring  dis- 
tinct thought  to  discover  or  to  enjoy:  the  choice,  for 
instance,  of  a particular  lurid  or  appalling  light,  to 
illustrate  an  incident  in  itself  terrible,  or  of  a particular 
tone  of  pure  color  to  prepare  the  mind  for  the  expression 
of  refined  and  delicate  feeling:  and,  in  a still  higher 
sense,  the  invention  of  such  incidents  and  thoughts  as 


OF  IDEAS  OF  RELATION. 


105 


can  be  expressed  in  words  as  well  as  on  canvas,  and  are 
totally  independent  of  any  means  of  art  but  such  as  may 
serve  for  the  bare  suggestion  of  them.  The  principal 
object  in  the  foreground  of  Turner’s  “ Building  of  Car- 
thage ” is  a group  of  children  sailing  toy -boats.  The  ex- 
quisite choice  of  this  incident,  as  expressive  of  the  ruling 
passion,  which  was  to  be  the  source  of  future  greatness, 
in*  preference  to  the  tumult  of  busy  stone-masons  or 
arming  soldiers,  is  quite  as  appreciable  when  it  is  told 
as  when  it  is  seen, — it  has  nothing  to  do  with  the  tech- 
nicalities of  painting ; a scratch  of  the  pen  would  have 
conveyed  the  idea  and  spoken  to  the  intellect  as  much  as 
the  elaborate  realizations  of  color.  Such  a thought  as 
this  is  something  far  above  all  art ; it  is  epic  poetry  of 
the  highest  order.  Claude,  in  subjects  of  the  same  kind, 
commonly  introduces  people  carrying  red  trunks  with 
iron  locks  about,  and  dwells,  with  infantine  delight,  on 
the  lustre  of  the  leather  and  the  ornaments  of  the  iron. 
The  intellect  can  have  no  occupation  here ; we  must  look 
to  the  imitation  or  to  nothing.  Consequently,  Turner 
rises  above  Claude  in  the  very  first  instant  of  the  concep- 
tion of  his  picture,  and  acquires  an  intellectual  superi- 
ority which  no  powers  of  the  draughtsman  or  the  artist 
(supposing  that  such  existed  in  his  antagonist)  could 


ever  wrest  from  him. 

Such  are  the  function  and  force  of  ideas  of  relation. 
They  are  what  I have  asserted  in  the  second  chapter  of 
this  section  to  be  the  noblest  subjects  of 

v 83  Ths  exceed- 

art.  Dependent  upon  it  only  for  expres-  fag  nobility  of 

1 1 x r theee  ideas. 

sion,  they  cause  ail  the  rest  01  its  compli- 
cated sources  of  pleasure  to  take,  in  comparison  with 
them,  the  place  of  mere  language  or  decoration ; nay, 
even  the  noblest  ideas  of  beauty  sink  at  once  beside 
these  into  subordination  and  subjection.  It  would  add 
little  to  the  influence  of  Landseer’s  picture  above  in- 
stanced, Chap.  II.,  § 4,  that  the  form  of  the  dog  should 


106 


OF  IDEAS  OF  RELATION. 


be  conceived  with  every  perfection  of  curve  and  color 
which  its  nature  was  capable  of,  and  that  the  ideal  lines 
should  be  carried  out  with  the  science  of  a Praxiteles ; 
nay,  the  instant  that  the  beauty  so  obtained  interfered 
with  the  impression  of  agony  and  desolation,  and  drew 
the  mind  away  from  the  feeling  of  the  animal  to  its  out- 
ward form,  that  instant  would  the  picture  become  mon- 
strous and  degraded.  The  utmost  glory  of  the  human 
body  is  a mean  subject  of  contemplation,  compared  to 
the  emotion,  exertion  and  character  of  that  which  ani- 
mates it ; the  lustre  of  the  limbs  of  the  Aphrodite  is 
faint  beside  that  of  the  brow  of  the  Madonna ; and  the 
divine  form  of  the  Greek  god,  except  as  it  is  the  incar- 
nation and  expression  of  divine  mind,  is  degraded  beside 
the  passion  and  the  prophecy  of  the  vaults  of  the  Sistine. 

Ideas  of  relation  are,  of  course,  with  respect  to  art 
generally,  the  most  extensive  as  the  most  important 
§4.  why  no  eub-  source  of  pleasure;  and  if  we  proposed 
^nsivTa^ciTss^s  entering  upon  the  criticism  of  historical 
necessary.  works,  it  would  be  absurd  to  attempt  to  do 

so  without  further  subdivision  and  arrangement.  But  the 
old  landscape  painters  got  over  so  much  canvas  with- 
out either  exercise  of,  or  appeal  to,  the  intellect,  that  we 
shall  be  little  troubled  with  the  subject  as  far  as  they  are 
concerned ; and  whatever  subdivision  we  may  adopt,  as  it 
will  therefore  have  particular  reference  to  the  works  of 
modern  artists,  will  be  better  understood  when  we  have 
obtained  some  knowledge  of  them  in  less  important 
points. 

By  the  term  “ ideas  of  relation,”  then,  I mean  in  future 
to  express  all  those  sources  of  pleasure  which  involve 
and  require,  at  the  instant  of  their  perception,  active 
exertion  of  the  intellectual  powers. 


SECTION  II. 


OF  POWER. 


CHAPTER  I. 


GENERAL  PRINCIPLES  RESPECTING  IDEAS  OF  POWER. 

We  have  seen  in  tlie  last  section,  what  classes  of  ideas 
may  be  conveyed  by  art,  and  we  have  been  able  so  far  to 
appreciate  their  relative  worth  as  to  see,  that  from  the 
list,  as  it  is  to  be  applied  to  the  purposes  § L No  necessity 
of  legitimate  criticism,  we  may  at  once  ■ S^deaTof  h£- 
throw  out  the  ideas  of  imitation ; first,  be-  tiou- 
cause,  as  we  have  shown,  they  are  unworthy  the  pursuit 
of  the  artist ; and  secondly,  because  they  are  nothing 
more  than  the  result  of  a particular  association  of  ideas 
of  truth.  In  examining  the  truth  of  art,  therefore,  we 
shall  be  compelled  to  take  notice  of  those  particular 
truths,  whose  association  gives  rise  to  the  ideas  of  imi- 
tation. We  shall  then  see  more  clearly  the  meanness  of 
those  truths,  and  we  shall  find  ourselves  able  to  use  them 
as  tests  of  vice  in  art,  saying  of  a picture, — “ It  deceives, 
therefore  it  must  be  bad.” 

Ideas  of  power,  in  the  same  way,  cannot  be  completely 
viewed  as  a separate  class ; not  because  they  are  mean 
or  unimportant,  but  because  they  are  al-  „ 

. , t§2.  Norforsepa- 

most  always  associated  with,  or  depend-  rate  ^tudy  of  ideas 

ent  upon,  some  of  the  higher  ideas  of  ° power' 

truth,  beauty,  or  relation,  rendered  with  decision  or 

velocity.  That  power  which  delights  us  in  the  chalk 


108 


GENERAL  PRINCIPLES  RESPECTING 


sketch  of  a great  painter  is  not  one  of  the  fingers,  not 
like  that  of  the  writing-master,  mere  dexterity  of  hand. 
It  is  the  accuracy  and  certainty  of  the  knowledge,  ren- 
dered evident  by  its  rapid  and  fearless  expression,  which 
is  the  real  source  of  pleasure;  and  so  upon  each  diffi- 
culty of  art,  whether  it  be  to  know,  or  to  relate,  or  to 
invent,  the  sensation  of  power  is  attendant,  when  we  see 
that  difficulty  totally  and  swiftly  vanquished.  Hence, 
as  we  determine  what  is  otherwise  desirable  in  art,  we 
shall  gradually  develop  the  sources  of  the  ideas  of 
power;  and  if  there  be  anything  difficult  which  is  not 
otherwise  desirable,  it  must  be  afterward  considered 
separately. 

But  it  will  be  necessary  at  present  to  notice  a particu- 
lar form  of  the  ideas  of  power,  which  is  partially  inde- 
pendent of  knowledge  of  truth,  or  diffi- 

§3.  Exceptunder  ^ 

one  particular  culty,  and  which  is  apt  to  corrupt  the 
judgment  of  the  critic,  and  debase  the 
work  of  the  artist.  It  is  evident  that  the  conception 
of  power  which  we  receive  from  a calculation  of  unseen 
difficulty,  and  an  estimate  of  unseen  strength,  can  never 
be  so  impressive  as  that  which  we  receive  from  the 
present  sensation  or  sight  of  the  one  resisting,  and  the 
other  overwhelming.  In  the  one  case  the  power  is  imag- 
ined, and  in  the  other  felt. 

There  are  thus  two  modes  in  which  we  receive  the  con- 
ception of  powTer ; one,  the  most  just,  when  by  a perfect 
knowledge  of  the  difficulty  to  be  overcome, 

§ 4 There  ore  two  ^ ^ 

modes  of  receiv-  and  the  means  employed,  we  form  a right 
commonly  incon-  estimate  of  the  faculties  exerted ; the 
other,  when  without  possessing  such  inti- 
mate and  accurate  knowledge,  we  are  impressed  by  a 
sensation  of  power  in  visible  action.  If  these  two  modes 
of  receiving  the  impression  agree  in  the  result,  and  if 
the  sensation  be  equal  to  the  estimate,  we  receive  the 
utmost  possible  idea  of  power.  But  this  is  the  case 


IDEAS  OF  POWER. 


109 


perhaps  with  the  works  of  only  one  man  out  of  the  whole 
circle  of  the  fathers  of  art,  of  him  to  whom  we  have  just 
referred,  Michael  Angelo.  In  others,  the  estimate  and 
the  sensation  are  constantly  unequal,  and  often  contra- 
dictory. 

The  first  reason  of  this  inconsistency  is,  that  in  order 
to  receive  a sensation  of  power,  we  must  see  it  in  opera- 
tion. Its  victory,  therefore,  must  not  be  g g reason 
achieved,  but  achieving,  and  therefore  of'  the  mconsis- 
imperfect.  Thus  we  receive  a greater 
sensation  of  power  from  the  half-hewn  limbs  of  the  Twi- 
light to  the  Day  of  the  Cappella  de’  Medici,  than  even 
from  the  divine  inebriety  of  the  Bacchus  in  the  gallery 
— greater  from  the  life  dashed  out  along  the  Friezes  of 
the  Parthenon,  than  from  the  polished  limbs  of  the 
Apollo, — greater  from  the  ink  sketch  of  the  head  of  Baf- 
faele’s  St.  Catherine,  than  from  the  perfection  of  its  real- 
ization. 

Another  reason  of  the  inconsistency  is,  that  the  sensa- 
tion of  power  is  in  proportion  to  the  apparent  inade- 
quacy of  the  means  to  the  end ; so  that  the 

, . „ . . , § 6.  Second  reason 

impression  is  much  greater  irom  a partial  for  the  inconsis- 
success  attained  with  slight  effort,  than  teucy' 
from  perfect  success  attained  with  greater  proportional 
effort.  Now,  in  all  art,  every  touch  or  effort  does  indi- 
vidually less  in  proportion  as  the  work  approaches  per- 
fection. The  first  five  chalk  touches  bring  a head  into 
existence  out  of  nothing.  No  five  touches  in  the  whole 
course  of  the  work  will  ever  do  so  much  as  these,  and 
the  difference  made  by  each  touch  is  more  and  more 
imperceptible  as  the  work  approaches  completion.  Con- 
sequently, the  ratio  between  the  means  employed  and 
the  effect  produced  is  constantly  decreasing,  and  there- 
fore the  least  sensation  of  power  is  received  from  the 
most  perfect  work. 

It  is  thus  evident  that  there  are  sensations  of  power 


110 


GENERAL  PRINCIPLES  RESPECTING 


about  imperfect  art,  so  that  it  be  right  art  as  far  as  it 
goes,  which  must  always  be  wanting  in  its  perfection ; 
§t.  The  sensation  an(^  that  there  are  sources  of  pleasure  in 
Sot  tcTbe  soufht  the  hasty  sketch  and  rough  hewn  block, 
in  imperfect  art.  which  are  partially  wanting  in  the  tinted 
canvas  and  the  polished  marble.  But  it  is  nevertheless 
wrong  to  prefer  the  sensation  of  power  to  the  intellect- 
ual perception  of  it.  There  is  in  reality  greater  power 
in  the  completion  than  in  the  commencement ; and 
though  it  be  not  so  manifest  to  the  senses,  it  ought  to 
have  higher  influence  on  the  mind;  and  therefore  in 
praising  pictures  for  the  ideas  of  power  they  convey,  we 
must  not  look  to  the  keenest  sensation,  but  to  the  high- 
est estimate,  accompanied  with  as  much  of  the  sensation 
as  is  compatible  with  it;  and  thus  we  shall  consider 
those  pictures  as  conveying  the  highest  ideas  of  power 
which  attain  the  most  perfect  end  with  the  slightest  pos- 
sible means ; not,  observe,  those  in  which,  though  much 
has  been  done  with  little,  all  has  not  been  done,  but 
from  the  picture,  in  which  all  has  been  done,  and  yet  not 
a touch  thrown  away.  The  quantity  of  work  in  the 
sketch  is  necessarily  less  in  proportion  to  the  effect 
obtained  than  in  the  picture;  but  yet  the  picture 
involves  the  greater  power,  if  out  of  all  the  additional 
labor  bestowed  on  it,  not  a touch  has  been  lost. 

For  instance,  there  are  few  drawings  of  the  present 
day  that  involve  greater  sensations  of  power  than  those 

§ s instances  in  ^rederick  Tayler.  Every  dash  tells,  and 
pictures  of  mod-  the  quantity  of  effect  obtained  is  enor- 

ern  artists.  . . . . . , . 

mous,  m proportion  to  the  apparent 
means.  But  the  effect  obtained  is  not  complete.  Brill- 
iant, beautiful,  and  right,  as  a sketch,  the  work  is  still 
far  from  perfection,  as  a drawing.  On  the  contrary, 
there  are  few  drawings  of  the  present  day  that  bear  evi- 
dence of  more  labor  bestowed,  or  more  complicated 
means  employed,  than  those  of  J ohn  Lewis.  The  result 


IDEAS  OF  POWER . 


Ill 


does  not,  at  first,  so  much  convey  an  impression  of  inher- 
ent power  as  of  prolonged  exertion;  but  the  result  is 
complete.  Water-color  drawing  can  be  carried  no  far- 
ther; nothing  has  been  left  unfinished  or  untold.  And 
on  examination  of  the  means  employed,  it  is  found  and 
felt  that  not  one  touch  out  of  the  thousands  employed 
has  been  thrown  away ; — that  not  one  dot  nor  dash  could 
be  spared  without  loss  of  effect ; — and  that  the  exertion 
lias  been  as  swift  as  it  has  been  prolonged — as  bold  as  it 
has  been  persevering.  The  power  involved  in  such  a 
picture  is  of  the  highest  order,  and  the  enduring  pleas- 
ure following  on  the  estimate  of  it  pure. 

But  there  is  still  farther  ground  for  caution  in  pursu- 
ing the  sensation  of  powder,  connected  with  the  particu- 
lar characters  and  modes  of  execution.  §9>  connection 
This  we  shall  be  better  able  to  understand  po^anddmodes 
by  briefly  reviewing  the  various  excel-  of  executi°n- 
fences  which  may  belong  to  execution,  and  give  pleas- 
ure in  it ; though  the  full  determination  of  what  is  desir- 
able in  it,  and  the  critical  examination  of  the  execution 
of  different  artists,  must  be  deferred,  as  will  be  immedi- 
ately seen,  until  we  are  more  fully  acquainted  with  the  • 
principles  of  truth. 


CHAPTEE  II. 


OF  IDEAS  OF  POWER,  AS  THEY  ARE  DEPENDENT  UPON 
EXECUTION. 

By  the  term  “execution,”  I understand  the  right 
„ . „ mechanical  use  of  the  means  of  art  to  pro- 

8 1.  Meaning  of  . 

the  term  “execu-  duce  a given  end. 

All  qualities  of  execution,  properly  so 

called,  are  influenced  by,  and  in  a great  degree  dependent 

on,  a far  higher  power  than  that  of  mere  execution, — 

knowledge  of  truth.  For  exactly  in  proportion  as  an 

artist  is  certain  of  his  end,  will  he  be  swift 

§2.  The  first  . _ . _ . 

quality  of  execu-  and  simple  in  his  means;  and,  as  he  is 

tion  is  truth.  . . . . , . , . , *1*1 

accurate  and  deep  m his  knowledge,  will 
he  be  refined  and  precise  in  his  touch.  The  first  merit 
of  manipulation,  then,  is  that  delicate  and  ceaseless 
expression  of  refined  truth  which  is  carried  out  to  the 
last  touch,  and  shadow  of  a touch,  and  which  makes 
every  hairsbreadth  of  importance,  and  every  gradation 
full  of  meaning.  It  is  not,  properly  speaking,  execution ; 
but  it  is  the  only  source  of  difference  between  the  execu- 
tion of  a commonplace  and  of  a perfect  artist.  The  low- 
est draughtsman,  if  he  have  spent  the  same  time  in 
handling  the  brush,  may  be  equal  to  the  highest  in  the 
other  qualities  of  execution  (in  swiftness,  simplicity,  and 
decision;)  but  not  in  truth.  It  is  in  the  perfection 
and  precision  of  the  instantaneous  line  that  the  claim  to 
immortality  is  laid.  And  if  this  truth  of  truths  be  pres- 
ent, all  the  other  qualities  of  execution  may  well  be 
spared;  and  to  those  artists  who  wish  to  excuse  their 


OF  IDEAS  OF  POWER. 


113 


ignorance  and  inaccuracy  by  a species  of  execution 
which  is  a perpetual  proclamation,  “qu’ils  n’ont  de- 
meure  qu’un  quart  d’heure  a le  faire,”  we  may  reply 
with  the  truthful  Alceste,  “ Monsieur,  le  temps  ne  fait 
rien  a l’affaire.” 

The  second  quality  of  execution  is  simplicity.  The 
more  unpretending,  quiet,  and  retiring  the  means,  the 
more  impressive  their  effect.  Any  osten-  §3  The  gecond> 
tation,  brilliancy,  or  pretension  of  touch,  8imPlicity- 
— any  exhibition  of  power  or  quickness,  merely  as  such, 
above  all,  any  attempt  to  render  lines  attractive  at  the 
expense  of  their  meaning,  is  vice. 

The  third  is  mystery.  Nature  is  always  mysterious 
and  secret  in  the  use  of  her  means ; and  art  is  always 

likest  her  when  it  is  most  inexplicable.  §4  The  thirdf 

That  execution  which  is  the  most  incom-  myBtery- 
prehensible,  and  which  therefore  defies  imitation,  (other 
qualities  being  supposed  alike,)  is  the  best. 

The  fourth  is  inadequacy.  The  less  sufficient  the 
means  appear  to  the  end,  the  greater  (as  has  been 
already  noticed)  will  be  the  sensation  of 

J §6.  The  fourth, 

power.  inadequacy ; and 

mi  np.i  ‘ 1 • • ,1  the  fifth,  decision. 

The  filth  is  decision:  the  appearance, 

that  is,  that  whatever  is  done,  has  been  done  fear- 
lessly and  at  once ; because  this  gives  us  the  impres- 
sion that  both  the  fact  to  be  represented,  and  the 
means  necessary  to  its  representation,  were  perfectly 
known. 

The  sixth  is  velocity.  Not  only  is  velocity,  or  the 
appearance  of  it,  agreeable  as  decision  is,  because  it 
gives  ideas  of  power  and  knowledge;  but  §6#  The  gixtht 
of  two  touches,  as  nearly  as  possible  the  velocity* 
same  in  other  respects,  the  quickest  will  invariably  be 
the  best.  Truth  being  supposed  equally  present  in  the 
shape  and  direction  of  both,  there  will  be  more  even- 
ness, grace  and  variety  in  the  quick  one  than  in  the 
8 


114: 


OF  IDEAS  OF  POWER , 


slow  one.  It  will  be  more  agreeable  to  the  eye  as  a 
touch  or  line,  and  will  possess  more  of  the  qualities  of 
the  lines  of  nature — gradation,  uncertainty,  and  unity. 

These  six  qualities  are  the  only  perfectly  legitimate 
sources  of  pleasure  in  execution ; but  I might  have  added 
§ 7.  strangeness  a seventh — strangeness,  which  in  many 
sJmrceof piSsure  cases  is  productive  of  a pleasure  not  alto- 
m execution.  gether  mean  or  degrading,  though  scarce- 
ly right.  Supposing  the  other  higher  qualities  first 
secured,  it  adds  in  no  small  degree  to  our  impression  of 
the  artist’s  knowledge,  if  the  means  used  be  such  as  we 
should  never  have  thought  of,  or  should  have  thought 
adapted  to  a contrary  effect.  Let  us,  for  instance,  com- 
pare the  execution  of  the  bull’s  head  in  the  left-hand 
lowest  corner  of  the  Adoration  of  the  Magi,  in  the 
Museum  at  Antwerp,  with  that  in  Berghem’s  landscape, 
No.  132,  in  the  Dulwich  gallery.  Rubens  first  scratches 
horizontally  over  his  canvas  a thin  grayish  brown,  trans- 
parent and  even,  very  much  the  color  of  light  wainscot ; 
the  horizontal  strokes  of  the  bristles  being  left  so  evi- 
dent, that  the  whole  might  be  taken  for  an  imitation  of 
wood,  were  it  not  for  its  transparency.  On  this  ground 
the  eye,  nostril,  and  outline  of  the  cheek  are  given  with 
two  or  three  rude,  brown  touches  (about  three  or  four 
minutes’  work  in  all),  though  the  head  is  colossal.  The 
background  is  then  laid  in  with  thick,  solid,  warm  white, 
actually  projecting  all  round  the  head,  leaving  it;  in  dark 
intaglio.  Finally,  five  thin  and  scratchy  strokes  of  very 
cold  bluish  white  are  struck  for  the  high  light  on  the 
forehead  and  the  nose,  and  the  head  is  complete.  Seen 
within  a yard  of  the  canvas,  it  looks  actually  transpar- 
ent— a flimsy,  meaningless,  distant  shadow;  while  the 
background  looks  solid,  projecting,  and  near.  From  the 
right  distance,  (ten  or  twelve  yards  off,  whence  alone  the 
whole  of  the  picture  can  be  seen,)  it  is  a complete,  rich, 
substantial,  and  living  realization  of  the  projecting  head 


AS  DEPENDENT  ON  EXECUTION. 


115 


of  the  animal;  while  the  background  falls  far  behind. 
Now,  there  is  no  slight  nor  mean  pleasure  in  perceiving 
such  a result  attained  by  means  so  strange.  By  Berg- 
hem,  on  the  other  hand,  a dark  background  is  first  laid 
in  with  exquisite  delicacy  and  transparency,  and  on  this 
the  cow’s  head  is  actually  modelled  in  luminous  white, 
the  separate  locks  of  hair  projecting  from  the  canvas. 
No  surprise,  nor  much  pleasure  of  any  kind,  would  be 
attendant  on  this  execution,  even  were  the  result  equally 
successful ; and  what  little  pleasure  wre  had  in  it  van- 
ishes, when  on  retiring  from  the  picture,  we  find  the 
head  shining  like  a distant  lantern,  instead  of  substan- 
tial or  near  Yet  strangeness  is  not  to  be  considered  as 
a legitimate  source  of  pleasure.  That  means  which  is 
most  conducive  to  the  end,  should  always  be  the  most 
pleasurable;  and  that  which  is  most  conducive  to  the 
end,  can  be  strange  only  to  the  ignorance  of  the  specta- 
tor. This  kind  of  pleasure  is  illegitimate,  therefore, 
because  it  implies  and  requires,  in  those  who  feel  it, 
ignorance  of  art. 

The  legitimate  sources  of  pleasure  in  execution  are 
therefore  truth,  simplicity,  mystery,  inadequacy,  deci- 
sion, and  velocity.  But  of  these,  be  it  ob-  § 8.  Yet  even  the 

-i  r.  • i i • ■ i legitimate  sources 

served,  some  are  so  iar  inconsistent  with  of  pleasure  in  exe- 

ii  ii  , ,1  , -i  *i  i • i - i cution  are  incon- 

others,  that  they  cannot  be  united  m high  sistent  with  each 
degrees.  Mystery  with  inadequacy,  for  otn8r‘ 
instance  ; since  to  see  that  the  means  are  inadequate,  we 
must  see  what  they  are.  Now,  the  first  three  are  the 
great  qualities  of  execution,  and  the  last  three  are  the 
attractive  ones,  because  on  them  are  chiefly  attendant 
the  ideas  of  power.  By  the  first  three  the  attention  is 
withdrawn  from  the  means  and  fixed  on  the  result : by 
the  last  three,  withdrawn  from  the  result  and  fixed  on 
the  means.  To  see  that  execution  is  swift  or  that  it  is 
decided,  we  must  look  away  from  its  creation  to  observe 
it  in  the  act  of  creating  ; we  must  think  more  of  the  pal- 


116 


OF  IDEAS  OF  POWER , 


let  than  of  the  picture,  but  simplicity  and  mystery  com- 
pel the  mind  to  leave  the  means  and  fix  itself  on  the 
§ 9.  And  fondness  conception.  Hence  the  danger  of  too 
leadf  to\he  adop-  great  fondness  for  those  sensations  of 
tion  of  the  lowest.  p0wer  which  are  associated  with  the  three 

last  qualities  of  execution ; for  although  it  is  most  de- 
sirable that  these  should  be  present  as  far  as  they  are 
consistent  with  the  others,  and  though  their  visible 
absence  is  always  painful  and  wrong,  yet  the  moment 
the  higher  qualities  are  sacrificed  to  them  in  the  least 
degree,  we  have  a brilliant  vice.  Berghem  and  Salvator 
Bosa  are  good  instances  of  vicious  execution  dependent 
on  too  great  fondness  for  sensations  of  power,  vicious 
because  intrusive  and  attractive  in  itself,  instead  of 
being  subordinate  to  its  results  and  forgotten  in  them. 
There  is  perhaps  no  greater  stumbling-block  in  the 
artist’s  way,  than  the  tendency  to  sacrifice  truth  and 
simplicity  to  decision  and  velocity,*  captivating  quali- 
ties, easy  of  attainment,  and  sure  to  attract  attention  and 
praise,  while  the  delicate  degree  of  truth  which  is  at 
first  sacrificed  to  them  is  so  totally  unappreciable  by  the 
majority  of  spectators,  so  difficult  of  attainment  to  the 
artist,  that  it  is  no  wonder  that  efforts  so  arduous  and 

* I have  here  noticed  only  noble  vices,  the  sacrifices  of  one  excel- 
lence to  another  legitimate  but  inferior  one.  There  are,  on  the  other 
hand,  qualities  of  execution  which  are  often  sought  for  and  praised, 
though  scarcely  by  the  class  of  persons  for  whom  I am  writing,  in 
which  everything  is  sacrificed  to  illegitimate  and  contemptible  sources 
of  pleasure,  and  these  are  vice  throughout,  and  have  no  redeeming 
quality  nor  excusing  aim.  Such  is  that  which  is  often  thought  so  de- 
sirable in  the  Drawing-master,  under  the  title  of  boldness,  meaning 
that  no  touch  is  ever  to  be  made  less  than  the  tenth  of  an  inch  broad  ; 
such,  on  the  other  hand,  the  softness  and  smoothness  which  are  the 
great  attraction  of  Carlo  Dolci,  and  such  the  exhibition  of  particular 
powers  and  tricks  of  the  hand  and  fingers,  in  total  forgetfulness  of 
any  end  whatsoever  to  be  attained  thereby,  which  is  especially  char- 
acteristic of  modern  engraving.  Compare  Sect.  II.  Chap.  II.  § 31. 
Note. 


AS  DEPENDENT  ON  EXECUTION  117 

unrewarded  should  be  abandoned.  But  if  the  tempta- 
tion be  once  yielded  to,  its  consequences  are  fatal ; there 
is  no  pause  in  the  fall.  I could  name  a §10  Therefore 
celebrated  modern  artist — once  a man  of  perilous- 
the  highest  power  and  promise,  who  is  a glaring  in- 
stance of  the  peril  of  such  a course.  Misled  by  the  un- 
due popularity  of  his  swift  execution,  he  has  sacrificed 
to  it,  first  precision,  and  then  truth,  and  her  associate, 
beauty.  What  was  first  neglect  of  nature,  has  become 
contradiction  of  her;  what  was  once  imperfection,  is 
now  falsehood ; and  all  that  was  meritorious  in  his  man- 
ner is  becoming  the  worst,  because  the  most  attractive, 
of  vices ; decision  without  a foundation,  and  swiftness 
without  an  end. 

Such  are  the  principal  modes  in  which  the  ideas  of 
power  may  become  a dangerous  attraction  to  the  artist 
— a false  test  to  the  critic.  But  in  all  §1L  Recapituia- 
cases  where  they  lead  us  astray  it  will  be  tion- 
found  that  the  error  is  caused  by  our  preferring  victory 
over  a small  apparent  difficulty  to  victory  over  a great, 
but  concealed,  one ; and  so  that  we  keep  this  distinction 
constantly  in  view,  (whether  with  reference  to  execution 
or  to  any  other  quality  of  art,)  between  the  sensation 
and  the  intellectual  estimate  of  power,  we  shall  always 
find  the  ideas  of  power  a just  and  high  source  of  pleas- 
ure in  every  kind  and  grade  of  art. 


CHAPTER  HI. 


OF  THE  SUBLIME. 

It  may  perhaps  be  wondered  that  in  the  division  we 
have  made  of  our  subject,  we  have  taken  no  notice  of  the 
sublime  in  art,  and  that  in  our  explanation  of  that  divi- 
sion we  have  not  once  used  the  word. 

The  fact  is,  that  sublimity  is  not  a specific  term, — not 
a term  descriptive  of  the  effect  of  a particular  class  of 
§ 1.  sublimity  is  ideas.  Anything*  which  elevates  the  mind 
the  mfnd  of  an^  sublime,  and  elevation  of  mind  is  pro- 
filing above  it.  duced  by  the  contemplation  of  greatness 
of  any  kind ; but  chiefly,  of  course,  by  the  greatness  of 
the  noblest  things.  Sublimity  is,  therefore,  only  an- 
other word  for  the  effect  of  greatness  upon  the  feelings. 
Greatness  of  matter,  space,  power,  virtue,  or  beauty,  are 
thus  all  sublime;  and  there  is  perhaps  no  desirable 
quality  of  a work  of  art,  which  in  its  perfection  is  not, 
in  some  way  or  degree,  sublime. 

I am  fully  prepared  to  allow  of  much  ingenuity  in 
Burke’s  theory  of  the  sublime,  as  connected  with  self- 
82.  Burke’s  theory  preservation.  There  are  few  things  so 
the lubiimeTncor-  great  as  death;  and  there  is  perhaps 
rect,  and  why.  nothing  which  banishes  all  littleness  of 
thought  and  feeling  in  an  equal  degree  with  its  con- 
templation. Everything,  therefore,  which  in  any  way 
points  to  it,  and,  therefore,  most  dangers  and  powers 
over  which  we  have  little  control,  are  in  some  degree 
sublime.  But  it  is  not  the  fear,  observe,  but  the  con- 
templation of  death ; not  the  instinctive  shudder  and 


OF  THE  SUBLIME. 


119 


struggle  of  self-preservation,  but  the  deliberate  meas- 
urement of  the  doom,  which  are  really  great  or  sublime 
in  feeling.  It  is  not  while  we  shrink,  but  while  we  defy, 
that  we  receive  or  convey  the  highest  conceptions  of  the 
fate.  There  is  no  sublimity  in  the  agony  of  terror. 
Whether  do  we  trace  it  most  in  the  cry  to  the  moun- 
tains, “ fall  on  us,”  and  to  the  hills,  “ cover  us,”  or  in  the 
calmness  of  the  prophecy — “ And  though  after  my  skin 
worms  destroy  this  body,  3^et  in  my  flesh  I shall  see 
God  ? ” A little  reflection  will  easily  con-  o „ _ . . 

vince  any  one,  that  so  far  from  the  feel-  lime,  but  not  the 

pip  . . fear  of  it. 

mgs  of  self-preservation  being  necessary 
to  the  sublime,  their  greatest  action  is  totally  destruc- 
tive of  it ; and  that  there  are  few  feelings  less  capable  of 
its  perception  than  those  of  a coward.  But  the  simple 
conception  or  idea  of  greatness  of  suffering  or  extent  of 
destruction  is  sublime,  whether  there  be  any  connection 
of  that  idea  with  ourselves  or  not.  If  we  were  placed 
beyond  the  reach  of  all  peril  or  pain,  the  perception  of 
these  agencies  in  their  influence  on  others  would  not  be 
less  sublime,  not  because  peril  or  pain  are  sublime  in 
their  own  nature,  but  because  their  contemplation,  ex- 
citing compassion  or  fortitude,  elevates  the  mind,  and 
renders  meanness  of  thought  impossible.  §4  The  M hegt 
Beauty  is  not  so  often  felt  to  be  sublime ; beauty is  sublime, 
because,  in  many  kinds  of  purely  material  beauty  there 
is  some  truth  in  Burke’s  assertion,  that  “ littleness  ” is 
one  of  its  elements.  But  he  who  has  not  felt  that  there 
may  be  beauty  without  littleness,  and  that  such  beauty 
is  a source  of  the  sublime,  is  yet  ignorant  of  the  meaning 
of  the  ideal  in  art.  I do  not  mean,  in 

§ 5.  And  generally 

tracing  the  source  of  the  sublime  to  great-  whatever  elevates 
ness,  to  hamper  myself  with  any  fine-spun 
theory.  I take  the  widest  possible  ground  of  investiga- 
tion, that  sublimity  is  found  wherever  anything  elevates 
the  mind ; that  is,  wherever  it  contemplates  anything 


120 


OF  THE  SUBLIME. 


above  itself,  and  perceives  it  to  be  so.  This  is  the  sim- 
ple philological  signification  of  the  word  derived  from 
sublimis  ; and  will  serve  us  much  more  easily,  and  be  a 
far  clearer  and  more  evident  ground  of  argument,  than 
any  mere  metaphysical  or  more  limited  definition,  while 
the  proof  of  its  justness  will  be  naturally  developed  by 
its  application  to  the  different  branches  of  art. 

As,  therefore,  the  sublime  is  not  distinct  from  what  is 
beautiful,  nor  from  other  sources  of  pleasure  in  art,  but 
§ 6.  The  former  is  only  a particular  mode  and  manifesta- 
OTbjeS1  is f there-  tion  of  them,  my  subject  will  divide  itself 
into  the  investigation  of  ideas  of  truth, 
beauty,  and  relation ; and  to  each  of  these  classes  of 
ideas  I destine  a separate  part  of  the  work.  The  inves- 
tigation of  ideas  of  truth  will  enable  us  to  determine 
the  relative  rank  of  artists  as  followers  and  historians  of 
nature. 

That  of  ideas  of  beauty  will  lead  us  to  compare  them 
in  their  attainment,  first  of  what  is  agreeable  in  techni- 
cal matters,  then  in  color  and  composition,  finally  and 
chiefly,  in  the  purity  of  their  conceptions  of  the  ideal. 

And  that  of  ideas  of  relation  will  lead  us  to  compare 
them  as  originators  of  just  thought. 


PART  II. 

OF  TRUTH. 


SECTION  I. 

GENERAL  PRINCIPLES  RESPECTING  IDEAS  OF  TRUTH. 


CHAPTER  I. 

OF  IDEAS  OF  TRUTH  IN  THEIR  CONNECTION  WITH  THOSE  OF 
BEAUTY  AND  RELATION. 

It  cannot  but  be  evident,  from  the  above  division  of 
the  ideas  conveyable  by  art,  that  the  landscape  painter 
must  always  have  two  great  and  distinct  ends ; the  first, 
to  induce  in  the  spectator’s  mind  the  faith- 

^ . § 1.  The  two  great 

ful  conception  of  any  natural  objects  what-  ends  of  landscape 
A ° _ painting  are  the 

soever ; the  second,  to  guide  the  spectator’s  representation  of 

_ . ° , , , , .,  facts  and  thoughts. 

mind  to  those  objects  most  worthy  ot  its 
contemplation,  and  to  inform  him  of  the  thoughts  and 
feelings  with  which  these  were  regarded  by  the  artist 
himself. 

In  attaining  the  first  end,  the  painter  only  places  the 
spectator  where  he  stands  himself ; he  sets  him  before 
the  landscape  and  leaves  him.  The  spectator  is  alone. 
He  may  follow  out  his  own  thoughts  as  he  would  in  the 
natural  solitude,  or  he  may  remain  untouched,  unreflect- 
ing and  regardless,  as  his  disposition  may  incline  him. 


122 


OF  IDEAS  OF  TRUTH. 


But  he  has  nothing  of  thought  given  to  him,  no  new 
ideas,  no  unknown  feelings,  forced  on  his  attention  or 
his  heart.  The  artist  is  his  conveyance,  not  his  compan- 
ion,— his  horse,  not  his  friend.  But  in  attaining  the 
second  end,  the  artist  not  only  places  the  spectator,  but 
talks  to  him : makes  him  a sharer  in  his  own  strong  feel- 
ings and  quick  thoughts ; hurries  him  away  in  his  own 
enthusiasm  ; guides  him  to  ail  that  is  beautiful ; snatches 
him  from  ail  that  is  base,  and  leaves  him  more  than  de- 
lighted,— ennobled  and  instructed,  under  the  sense  of 
having  not  only  beheld  a new  scene,  but  of  having  held 
communion  with  a new  mind,  and  having  been  endowed 
for  a time  with  the  keen  perception  and  the  impetuous 
emotion  of  a nobler  and  more  penetrating  intelligence. 

Each  of  these  different  aims  of  art  will  necessitate  a 
different  system  of  choice  of  objects  to  be  represented. 
§ 2.  They  induce  The  first  does  not  indeed  imply  choice  at 
all,  but  it  is  usually  united  with  the  selec- 
tion of  such  objects  as  may  be  naturally 
and  constantly  pleasing  to  all  men,  at  all  times  ; and  this 
selection,  when  perfect  and  careful,  leads  to  the  attain- 
ment of  the  pure  ideal.  But  the  artist  aiming  at  the 
second  end,  selects  his  objects  for  their  meaning  and 
character,  rather  than  for  their  beauty ; and  uses  them 
rather  to  throw  light  upon  the  particular  thought  he 
wishes  to  convey,  than  as  in  themselves  objects  of  uncon- 
nected admiration. 

Now,  although  the  first  mode  of  selection,  when  guided 
by  deep  reflection,  may  rise  to  the  production  of  works 
§ 3.  The  first  mode  possessing  a noble  and  ceaseless  influence 
producelsameuess  on  the  human  mind,  it  is  likely  to  degen er- 
and  repetition.  a-fce  into,  or  rather,  in  nine  cases  out  of  ten, 

it  never  goes  beyond,  a mere  appeal  to  such  parts  of  our 
animal  nature  as  are  constant  and  common — shared  by 
all,  and  perpetual  in  all ; such,  for  instance,  as  the 
pleasure  of  the  eye  in  the  opposition  of  a cold  and  warm 


a different  choice 
of  material  sub 
jects. 


OF  IDEAS  OF  TRUTH. 


123 


color,  or  of  a massy  form  with  a delicate  one.  It  also 
tends  to  induce  constant  repetition  of  the  same  ideas, 
and  reference  to  the  same  principles;  it  gives  rise  to 
those  rules  of  art  which  properly  excited  Reynolds’s  in- 
dignation when  applied  to  its  higher  efforts ; it  is  the 
source  of,  and  the  apology  for,  that  host  of  technicalities 
and  absurdities  which  in  all  ages  have  been  the  curse  of 
art  and  the  crown  of  the  connoisseur. 

But  art,  in  its  second  and  highest  aim,  is  not  an  appeal 
to  constant  animal  feelings,  but  an  expression  and 
awakening  of  individual  thought : it  is  § 4 The  ^cor}(Ji 
therefore  as  various  and  as  extended  in  its  necessitating  va- 
efforts  as  the  compass  and  grasp  of  the 
directing  mind ; and  we  feel,  in  each  of  its  results,  that 
we  are  looking,  not  at  a specimen  of  a tradesman’s  wares, 
of  which  he  is  ready  to  make  us  a dozen  to  match,  but  at 
one  coruscation  of  a perpetually  active  mind,  like  which 
there  has  not  been,  and  will  not  be,  another. 

Hence,  although  there  can  be  no  doubt  which  of  these 
branches  of  art  is  the  highest,  it  is  equally  evident  that 
the  first  will  be  the  most  generally  felt  and  § 5m  yet  the  first 
appreciated.  For  the  simple  statement  of  is  ^eligkful  to  ail. 
the  truths  of  nature  must  in  itself  be  pleasing  to  every 
order  of  mind ; because  every  truth  of  nature  is  more  or 
less  beautiful ; and  if  there  be  just  and  right  selection 
of  the  more  important  of  these  truths — based,  as  above 
explained,  on  feelings  and  desires  common  to  all  man- 
kind— the  facts  so  selected  must,  in  some  degree,  be  de- 
lightful to  all,  and  their  value  appreciable  by  all : more 
or  less,  indeed,  as  their  senses  and  instinct  have  been 
rendered  more  or  less  acute  and  accurate  by  use  and 
study ; but  in  some  degree  by  all,  and  in  the  same  way 
by  all.  But  the  highest  art,  being  based  § 6t  The  Becond 
on  sensations  of  peculiar  minds,  sensations  only  t0  a few* 
occurring  to  them  only  at  particular  times,  and  to  a plu- 
rality of  mankind  perhaps  never,  and  being  expressive 


124 


OF  IDEAS  OF  TRUTH. 


of  thoughts  which  could  only  rise  out  of  a mass  of  the 
most  extended  knowledge,  and  of  dispositions  modified 
in  a thousand  ways  by  peculiarity  of  intellect — can  only 
be  met  and  understood  by  persons  having  some  sort  of 
sympathy  with  the  high  and  solitary  minds  which  pro- 
duced it — sympathy  only  to  be  felt  by  minds  in  some 
degree  high  and  solitary  themselves.  He  alone  can  ap- 
preciate the  art,  who  could  comprehend  the  conversation 
of  the  painter,  and  share  in  his  emotion,  in  moments  of 
his  most  fiery  passion  and  most  original  thought.  And 
whereas  the  true  meaning  and  end  of  his  art  must  thus 
be  sealed  to  thousands,  or  misunderstood  by  them ; so 
also,  as  he  is  sometimes  obliged,  in  working  out  his  own 
peculiar  end,  to  set  at  defiance  those  constant  laws  which 
have  arisen  out  of  our  lower  and  changeless  desires,  that 
whose  purpose  is  unseen,  is  frequently  in  its  means  and 
parts  displeasing. 

But  this  want  of  extended  influence  in  high  art,  be  it 
especially  observed,  proceeds  from  no  want  of  truth  in 
the  art  itself,  but  from  a want  of  sympathy  in  the  specta- 
tor with  those  feelings  in  the  artist  which  prompt  him  to 
the  utterance  of  one  truth  rather  than  of 
another.  For  (and  this  is  what  I wish  at 
present  especially  to  insist  upon)  although 
it  is  possible  to  reach  what  I have  stated  to  be  the  first 
end  of  art,  the  representation  of  facts,  without  reaching 
the  second,  the  representation  of  thoughts,  yet  it  is  al- 
together impossible  to  reach  the  second  without  having 
previously  reached  the  first.  I do  not  say  that  a man 
cannot  think,  having  false  basis  and  material  for  thought ; 
but  that  a false  thought  is  worse  than  the  want  of 
thought,  and  therefore  is  not  art.  And  this  is  the  rea- 
son why,  though  I consider  the  second  as  the  real  and 
only  important  end  of  all  art,  I call  the  representation 
of  facts  the  first  end ; because  it  is  necessary  to  the 
other,  and  must  be  attained  before  it.  It  is  the  founda- 


§ 7.  The  first 
necessary  to  the 
second. 


OF  IDEAS  OF  TRUTH. 


125 


tion  of  all  art;  like  real  foundations  it  may  be  little 
thought  of  when  a brilliant  fabric  is  raised  on  it ; but  it 
must  be  there : and  as  few  buildings  are  beautiful  un- 
less every  line  and  column  of  their  mass  have  reference 
to  their  foundation,  and  are  suggestive  of  its  existence 
and  strength,  so  nothing  can  be  beautiful  in  art  which 
does  not  in  all  its  parts  suggest  and  guide  to  the  foun- 
dation, even  where  no  undecorated  portion  of  it  is  visi- 
ble ; while  the  noblest  edifices  of  art  are  built  of  such 
pure  and  fine  crystal  that  the  foundation  may  all  be  seen 
through  them ; and  then  many,  while  they  do  not  see 
what  is  built  upon  that  first  story,  yet  much  admire  the 
solidity  of  its  brickwork ; thinking  they  understand  all 
that  is  to  be  understood  of  the  matter;  while  others 
stand  beside  them,  looking  not  at  the  low  story,  but 
up  into  the  heaven  at  that  building  of  crystal  in  which 
the  builder’s  spirit  is  dwelling.  And  thus,  though  we 
want  the  thoughts  and  feelings  of  the  artist  as  well  as 
the  truth,  yet  they  must  be  thoughts  arising  out  of  the 
knowledge  of  truth,  and  feelings  raising  out  of  the  con- 
templation of  truth.  We  do  not  want  his  mind  to  be  as 
badly  blown  glass,  that  distorts  what  we  see  through  it ; 
but  like  a glass  of  sweet  and  strange  color,  that  gives 
new  tones  to  what  we  see  through  it ; and  a glass  of  rare 
strength  and  clearness  too,  to  let  us  see  more  than  we 
could  ourselves,  and  bring  nature  up  to  us  and  near  to 
us.  Nothing  can  atone  for  the  want  of  truth,  not  the 
most  brilliant  imagination,  the  most  playful  fancy,  the 
most  pure  feeling,  (supposing  that  feeling  could  be  pure 
and  false  at  the  same  time ;)  not  the  most  § g Tbe  exceed 
exalted  conception,  nor  the  most  compre-  ^ i.ut^mportance 
hensive  grasp  of  intellect,  can  make  amends 
for  the  want  of  truth,  and  that  for  two  reasons : first,  be- 
cause falsehood  is  in  itself  revolting  and  degrading; 
and  secondly,  because  nature  is  so  immeasurably  supe- 
rior to  all  that  the  human  mind  can  conceive,  that  every 


126 


OF  IDEAS  OF  TRUTH. 


departure  from  her  is  a fall  beneath  her,  so  that  there 
can  be  no  such  thing1  as  an  ornamental  falsehood.  All 
falsehood  must  be  a blot  as  well  as  a sin,  an  injury  as 
well  as  a deception. 

We  shall,  in  consequence,  find  that  no  artist  can  be 
graceful,  imaginative,  or  original,  unless  he  be  truth - 
„ n _ , , ful ; and  that  the  pursuit  of  beauty,  in- 

want  of  beauty  no  stead  of  leading  us  away  from  truth,  in- 
creases  the  desire  for  it  and  the  necessity 
of  it  tenfold ; so  that  those  artists  who  are  really  great 
in  imaginative  power,  will  be  found  to  have  based  their 
boldness  of  conception  on  a mass  of  knowledge  far  ex- 
ceeding that  possessed  by  those  who  pride  themselves 
on  its  accumulation  without  regarding  its  use.  Coldness 
and  want  of  passion  in  a picture,  are  not  signs  of  the 
accuracy,  but  of  the  paucity,  of  its  statements ; true  vigor 
and  brilliancy  are  not  signs  of  audacity,  but  of  knowl- 
edge. 

Hence  it  follows  that  it  is  in  the  power  of  all,  with 
care  and  time,  to  form  something  like  a just  judgment 
§ 10  How  truth  the  relafiYe  merits  of  artists ; for,  al- 
ered  a just  <crfteri-  tll0llg‘l1  with  respect  to  the  feeling  and 
on  of  ail  art.  passion  of  pictures,  it  is  often  as  impossi- 
ble to  criticise  as  to  appreciate,  except  to  such  as  are 
in  some  degree  equal  in  powers  of  mind,  and  in  some 
respects  the  same  in  modes  of  mind,  with  those  whose 
works  they  judge ; yet,  with  respect  to  the  representa- 
tion of  facts,  it  is  possible  for  all,  by  attention,  to  form 
a right  judgment  of  the  respective  powers  and  attain- 
ments of  every  artist.  Truth  is  a bar  of  comparison  at 
which  they  may  all  be  examined,  and  according  to  the 
rank  they  take  in  this  examination,  will  almost  invaria- 
bly be  that  which,  if  capable  of  appreciating  them  in 
every  respect,  we  should  be  just  in  assigning  them ; 
so  strict  is  the  connection,  so  constant  the  relation 
between  the  sum  of  knowledge  and  the  extent  of 


OF  IDEAS  OF  TRUTH. 


127 


thought,  between  accuracy  of  perception  and  vividness 
of  idea. 

I shall  endeavor,  therefore,  in  the  present  portion  of 
the  work,  to  enter  with  care  and  impartiality  into  the 
investigation  of  the  claims  of  the  schools  of  ancient  and 
modern  landscape  to  faithfulness  in  representing  nature. 
I shall  pay  no  regard  whatsoever  to  what  may  be  thought 
beautiful,  or  sublime,  or  imaginative.  I shall  look  only 
for  truth;  bare,  clear,  downright  statement  of  facts; 
showing  in  each  particular,  as  far  as  I am  able,  what  the 
truth  of  nature  is,  and  then  seeking  for  the  plain  ex- 
pression of  it,  and  for  that  alone.  And  I shall  thus  en- 
deavor, totally  regardless  of  fervor  of  imagination  or 
brilliancy  of  effect,  or  any  other  of  their  more  capti- 
vating qualities,  to  examine  and  to  judge  the  works  of 
the  great  living  painter,  who  is,  I believe,  imagined  by 
the  majority  of  the  public  to  paint  more  falsehood  and 
less  fact  than  any  other  known  master.  We  shall  see 
with  what  reason. 


CHAPTEK  n. 


THAT  THE  TRUTH  OE  NATURE  IS  NOT  TO  BE  DISCERNED  BY 
THE  UNEDUCATED  SENSES. 

It  may  be  here  inquired  by  the  reader,  with  much 
appearance  of  reason,  why  I think  it  necessary  to  devote 
a separate  portion  of  the  work  to  the  showing  of  what  is 
truthful  in  art.  “ Cannot  we,”  say  the  public,  “ see  what 

§1.  The  common  natnre  is  with  0U1‘  OWn  eyes>  and  °ut 

men  \^th^respect  ^or  ourselves  what  is  like  her?”  It  will 
d°iscernLg0truth°f  ^e  as  well  to  determine  this  question  be- 
fore we  go  farther,  because  if  this  were 
possible,  there  would  be  little  need  of  criticism  or  teach- 
ing with  respect  to  art. 

Now,  I have  just  said  that  it  is  possible  for  all  men,  by 
care  and  attention,  to  form  a just  judgment  of  the  fidel- 
ity of  artists  to  nature.  To  do  this,  no  peculiar  powers 
of  mind  are  required,  no  sympathy  with  particular  feel- 
ings, nothing  which  every  man  of  ordinary  intellect  does 
not  in  some  degree  possess, — powers,  namely,  of  observa- 
tion and  intelligence,  which  by  cultivation  may  be 
brought  to  a high  degree  of  perfection  and  acuteness. 
But  until  this  cultivation  has  been  bestowed,  and  until 
the  instrument  thereby  perfected  has  been  employed  in 
a consistent  series  of  careful  observation,  it  is  as  absurd 
as  it  is  audacious  to  pretend  to  form  any  judgment 
whatsoever  respecting  the  truth  of  art:  and  my  first 
business,  before  going  a step  farther,  must  be  to  combat 
the  nearly  universal  error  of  belief  among  the  thought- 
less and  unreflecting,  that  they  know  either  what  nature 


TRUTH  NOT  EASILY  DISCERNED. 


129 


is,  or  what  is  like  her,  that  they  can  discover  truth  by 
instinct,  and  that  their  minds  are  such  pure  Venice  glass 
as  to  be  shocked  by  all  treachery.  I have  to  prove  to 
them  that  there  are  more  things  in  heaven  and  earth 
than  are  dreamed  of  in  their  philosophy,  and  that  the 
truth  of  nature  is  a part  of  the  truth  of  God ; to  him 
who  does  not  search  it  out,  darkness,  as  it  is  to  him  who 
does,  infinity. 

The  first  great  mistake  that  people  make  in  the  mat- 
ter, is  the  supposition  that  they  must  see  a thing  if  it  be 
before  their  eyes.  They  forget  the  great  truth  told  them 
by  Locke,  Book  ii.,  chap.  9,  § 3 “ This  is  , 2 Men  u(mal]jr 
certain,  that  whatever  alterations  are  made  Jj^reof  gJSf 
in  the  body,  if  they  reach  not  the  mind,  eyes- 
whatever  impressions  are  made  on  the  outward  parts, 
if  they  are  not  taken  notice  of  within,  there  is  no  per- 
ception. Fire  may  burn  our  bodies,  with  no  other  effect 
than  it  does  a billet,  unless  the  motion  be  continued  to 
the  brain,  and  there  the  sense  of  heat  or  idea  of  pain  be 
produced  in  the  mind,  wherein  consists  actual  percep- 
tion. How  often  may  a man  observe  in  himself,  that 
while  his  mind  is  intently  employed  in  the  contempla- 
tion of  some  subjects  and  curiously  surveying  some  ideas 
that  are  there,  it  takes  no  notice  of  impressions  of  sound- 
ing bodies,  made  upon  the  organ  of  hearing,  with  the 
same  attention  that  uses  to  be  for  the  producing  the 
ideas  of  sound ! A sufficient  impulse  there  may  be  on 
the  organ,  but  it  not  reaching  the  observation  of  the 
mind,  there  follows  no  perception,  and  though  the  mo- 
tion that  uses  to  produce  the  idea  of  sound  be  made  in 
the  ear,  yet  no  sound  is  heard.”  And  what  is  here  said, 
which  all  must  feel  by  their  own  experience  to  be  true, 
is  more  remarkably  and  necessarily  the  case  with  sight 
than  with  any  other  of  the  senses,  for  this  reason,  that 
the  ear  is  not  accustomed  to  exercise  constantly  its  func- 
tions of  hearing ; it  is  accustomed  to  stillness,  and  the 
9 


130 


TRUTH  NOT  EASILY  DISCERNED. 


occurrence  of  a sound  of  any  kind  whatsoever  is  apt  to 
awake  attention,  and  be  followed  with  perception,  in 
proportion  to  the  degree  of  sound ; but  the  eye,  during 
our  waking  hours,  exercises  constantly  its  function  of 
seeing ; it  is  its  constant  habit ; we  always,  as  far  as  the 
bodily  organ  is  concerned,  see  something,  and  we  always 
see  in  the  same  degree,  so  that  the  occurrence  of  sight, 
as  such,  to  the  eye,  is  only  the  continuance  of  its  neces- 
sary state  of  action,  and  awakes  no  attention  whatsoever, 
except  by  the  particular  nature  and  quality  of  the  sight. 
And  thus,  unless  the  minds  of  men  are  particularly  di- 
rected to  the  impressions  of  sight,  objects  pass  perpetu- 
ally before  the  eyes  without  conveying  any  impression 
to  the  brain  at  all;  and  so  pass  actually  unseen,  not 
merely  unnoticed,  but  in  the  full,  clear  sense  of  the  word, 
unseen.  And  numbers  of  men  being  preoccupied  witli 
business  or  care  of  some  description,  totally  unconnected 
with  the  impressions  of  sight,  such  is  actually  the  case 
with  them,  they  receiving  from  nature  only  the  inevi- 
table sensations  of  blueness,  redness,  darkness,  light, 
etc.,  and  except  at  particular  and  rare  moments,  no  more 
whatsoever. 

The  degree  of  ignorance  of  external  nature  in  which 
men  may  thus  remain,  depends,  therefore,  partly  on  the 

number  and  character  of  the  subjects  with 

§ 3.  But  more  or  i n 

less  in  proportion  which  their  minds  may  be  otherwise  occu- 

to  their  natural  . _ _ _ . , , „ 

sensibility  to  what  pied,  and  partly  on  a natural  want  ot  sea- 
ls beautiful.  » -i  ± p p 

sibility  to  the  power  ot  beauty  ot  form, 
and  the  other  attributes  of  external  objects.  I do  not 
think  that  there  is  ever  such  absolute  incapacity  in  the 
eye  for  distinguishing  and  receiving  pleasure  from  cer- 
tain forms  and  colors,  as  there  is  in  persons  who  are 
technically  said  to  have  no  ear,  for  distinguishing  notes, 
but  there  is  naturally  every  degree  of  bluntness  and 
acuteness,  both  for  perceiving  the  truth  of  form,  and  for 
receiving  pleasure  from  it  when  perceived.  And  al- 


TRUTH  NOT  EASILY  DISCERNED. 


131 


though  I believe  even  the  lowest  degree  of  these  facul- 
ties can  be  expanded  almost  unlimitedly  by  cultivation, 
the  pleasure  received  rewards  not  the  labor  necessary, 
and  the  pursuit  is  abandoned.  So  that  while  in  those 
whose  sensations  are  naturally  acute  and  vivid,  the  call 
of  external  nature  is  so  strong  that  it  must  be  obeyed, 
and  is  ever  heard  louder  as  the  approach  to  her  is  nearer, 
— in  those  whose  sensations  are  naturally  blunt,  the  call 
is  overpowered  at  once  by  other  thoughts,  and  their 
faculties  of  perception,  weak  originally,  die  of  disuse. 
With  this  kind  of  bodily  sensibility  to  §4.  connected 
color  and  form  is  intimately  connected  that  Sate  aofP  moral 
higher  sensibility  which  we  revere  as  one  feelmg' 
of  the  chief  attributes  of  all  noble  minds,  and  as  the 
chief  spring  of  real  poetry.  I believe  this  kind  of  sensi- 
bility may  be  entirely  resolved  into  the  acuteness  of 
bodily  sense  of  which  I have  been  speaking,  associated 
With  love,  love  I mean  in  its  infinite  and  holy  functions, 
as  it  embraces  divine  and  human  and  brutal  intelli- 
gences, and  hallows  the  physical  perception  of  external 
objects  by  association,  gratitude,  veneration,  and  other 
pure  feelings  of  our  moral  nature.  And  although  the 
discovery  of  truth  is  in  itself  altogether  intellectual,  and 
dependent  merely  on  our  powers  of  physical  perception 
and  abstract  intellect,  wholly  independent  of  our  moral 
nature,  yet  these  instruments  (perception  and  judgment) 
are  so  sharpened  and  brightened,  and  so  far  more  swiftly 
and  effectively  used,  when  they  have  the  energy  and  pas- 
sion of  our  moral  nature  to  bring  them  into  action — per- 
ception is  so  quickened  by  love,  and  judgment  so  tem- 
pered by  veneration,  that,  practically,  a man  of  deadened 
moral  sensation  is  always  dull  in  his  perception  of  truth, 
and  thousands  of  the  highest  and  most  divine  truths  of 
nature  ate  wholly  concealed  from  him,  however  constant 
and  indefatigable  may  be  his  intellectual  search.  Thus, 
then,  the  farther  we  look,  the  more  we  are  limited  in  the 


132 


TRUTH  NOT  EASILY  DISCERNED. 


number  of  those  to  whom  we  should  choose  to  appeal  as 
judges  of  truth,  and  the  more  we  perceive  how  great  a 
number  of  mankind  may  be  partially  incapacitated  from 
either  discovering  or  feeling  it. 

Next  to  sensibility,  which  is  necessary  for  the  percep- 
tion of  facts,  come  reflection  and  memory,  which  are  nec- 
§ 5.  And  of  the  in-  essary  for  the  retention  of  them,  and  rec- 
teiiectuai  powers.  Ggnition  of  their  resemblances.  For  a man 

may  receive  impression  after  impression,  and  that  viv- 
idly and  with  delight,  and  yet,  if  he  take  no  care  to  rea- 
son upon  those  impressions  and  trace  them  to  their 
sources,  he  may  remain  totally  ignorant  of  the  facts  that 
produced  them ; nay,  may  attribute  them  to  facts  with 
which  they  have  no  connection,  or  may  coin  causes  for 
them  that  have  no  existence  at  all.  And  the  more  sensi- 
bility and  imagination  a man  possesses,  the  more  likely 
will  he  be  to  fall  into  error ; for  then  he  will  see  what- 
ever he  expects,  and  admire  and  judge  with  his  heart, 
and  not  with  his  eyes.  How  many  people  are  misled, 
by  what  has  been  said  and  sung  of  the  serenity  of  the 
Italian  skies,  to  suppose  they  must  be  more  blue  than 
the  skies  of  the  north,  and  think  that  they  see  them 
so  ; whereas,  the  sky  of  Italy  is  far  more  dull  and  gray 
in  color  than  the  skies  of  the  north,  and  is  distinguished 
only  by  its  intense  repose  of  light.  And  this  is  con- 
firmed by  Benvenuto  Cellini,  who,  I remember,  on  his 
first  entering  France,  is  especially  struck  with  the  clear- 
ness of  the  sky,  as  contrasted  with  the  mist  of  Italy. 
And  what  is  more  strange  still,  when  people  see  in  a 
painting  what  they  suppose  to  have  been  the  source  of 
their  impressions,  they  will  affirm  it  to  be  truthful, 
though  they  feel  no  such  impression  resulting  from  it. 
Thus,  though  day  after  day  they  may  have  been  im- 
pressed by  the  tone  and  warmth  of  an  Italian  sky,  yet 
not  having  traced  the  feeling  to  its  source,  and  suppos- 
ing themselves  impressed  by  its  blueness , they  will  affirm 


TRUTH  NOT  EASILY  DISCERNED. 


133 


a blue  sky  in  a painting  to  be  truthful,  and  reject  the 
most  faithful  rendering  of  all  the  real  attributes  of  Italy 
as  cold  or  dull.  And  this  influence  of  the  imagination 
over  the  senses,  is  peculiarly  observable  in  „ . , J 

’ T ...  p . § 6.  How  sight  de- 

the  perpetual  disposition  of  mankind  to  pends  upon  pre- 
suppose that  they  see  what  they  know,  and  vl0Ub  know  e ge‘ 
vice  versa  in  their  not  seeing  what  they  do  not  know. 
Thus,  if  a child  be  asked  to  draw  the  corner  of  a house, 
he  'will  lay  down  something  in  the  form  of  the  letter  T. 
He  has  no  conception  that  the  two  lines  of  the  roof, 
which  he  knows  to  be  level,  produce  on  his  eye  the  im- 
pression of  a slope.  It  requires  repeated  and  close  at- 
tention before  he  detects  this  fact,  or  can  be  made  to  feel 
that  the  lines  on  his  paper  are  false.  And  the  Chinese, 
children  in  all  things,  suppose  a good  perspective  draw- 
ing to  be  as  false  as  we  feel  their  plate  patterns  to  be,  or 
wonder  at  the  strange  buildings  which  come  to  a point 
at  the  end.  And  all  the  early  works,  whether  of  nations 
or  of  men,  show,  by  their  want  of  shade , how  little  the 
eye,  without  knowledge,  is  to  be  depended  upon  to  dis- 
cover truth.  The  eye  of  a Red  Indian,  keen  enough  to 
find  the  trace  of  his  enemy  or  his  prey,  even  in  the  un- 
natural turn  of  a trodden  leaf,  is  yet  so  blunt  to  the  im- 
pressions of  shade,  that  Mr.  Catlin  mentions  his  once 
having  been  in  great  danger  from  having  painted  a por- 
trait with  the  face  in  half-light,  which  the  untutored  ob- 
servers imagined  and  affirmed  to  be  the  painting  of  half 
a face.  Barry,  in  his  sixth  lecture,  takes  notice  of  the 
same  want  of  actual  sight  in  the  early  painters  of  Italy. 
“ The  imitations,”  he  says,  “ of  early  art  are  like  those  of 
children — nothing  is  seen  in  the  spectacle  before  us, 
unless  it  be  previously  known  and  sought  for  ;■  and  num- 
berless observable  differences  between  the  age  of  igno- 
rance and  that  of  knowledge,  show  how  much  the  con- 
traction or  extension  of  our  sphere  of  vision  depends 
upon  other  considerations  than  the  mere  returns  of  our 


134 


TRUTH  NOT  EASILY  DISCERNED. 


natural  optics.”  And  the  deception  which  takes  place 
so  broadly  in  cases  like  these,  has  infinitely  greater  in- 
fluence over  our  judgment  of  the  more  intricate  and  less 
tangible  truths  of  nature.  We  are  constantly  supposing 
that  we  see  what  experience  only  has  shown  us,  or  can 
show  us,  to  have  existence,  constantly  missing  the  sight 
of  what  we  do  not  know  beforehand  to  be  visible ; and 
painters,  to  the  last  hour  of  their  lives,  are  apt  to  fall  in 
some  degree  into  the  error  of  painting  what  exists,  rather 
than  what  they  can  see.  I shall  prove  the  extent  of  this 
error  more  completely  hereafter. 

Be  it  also  observed,  that  all  these  difficulties  would 
lie  in  the  way,  even  if  the  truths  of  nature  were  always 
§7.  The  difficulty  the  same,  constantly  repeated  and  brought 
variety6  of  truths  before  us.  But  the  truths  of  nature  are 
m nature.  0ne  eternal  change  — one  infinite  vari- 

ety. There  is  no  bush  on  the  face  of  the  globe  exactly 
like  another  bush ; — there  are  no  two  trees  in  the  forest 
whose  boughs  bend  into  the  same  network,  nor  two  leaves 
on  the  same  tree  which  could  not  be  told  one  from  the 
other,  nor  two  waves  in  the  sea  exactly  alike.  And  out 
of  this  mass  of  various,  yet  agreeing  beauty,  it  is  by  long 
attention  only  that  the  conception  of  the  constant  char- 
acter— the  ideal  form — hinted  at  by  all,  yet  assumed  by 
none,  is  fixed  upon  the  imagination  for  its  standard  of 
truth. 

It  is  not  singular,  therefore,  nor  in  any  way  disgrace- 
ful, that  the  majority  of  spectators  are  totally  incapable 
of  appreciating  the  truth  of  nature,  when  fully  set  before 
them ; but  it  is  both  singular  and  disgraceful  that  it  is 
so  difficult  to  convince  them  of  their  own  incapability. 
Ask  the  connoisseur,  who  has  scampered  over  all  Europe, 
the  shape  of  the  leaf  of  an  elm,  and  the  chances  are  ninety 
to  one  that  he  cannot  tell  you ; and  yet  he  will  be  volu- 
ble of  criticism  on  every  painted  landscape  from  Dresden 
to  Madrid,  and  pretend  to  tell  you  whether  they  are  like 


TRUTH  NOT  EASILY  DISCERNED. 


135 


nature  or  not.  Ask  an  enthusiastic  chatterer  in  the  Sis- 
tine  Chapel  how  many  ribs  he  has,  and  you  get  no  an- 
swer ; but  it  is  odds  that  you  do  not  get  out  of  the  door 
without  his  informing  you  that  he  considers  such  and 
such  a figure  badly  drawn  ! 

A few  such  interrogations  as  these  might  indeed  con- 
vict, if  not  convince,  the  mass  of  spectators  of  incapa- 
bility, Were  it  not  for  the  universal  reply,  that  they  can 
recognize  what  they  cannot  describe,  and  feel  what  is 
truthful,  though  they  do  not  know  what  is  § 8.  we  recognize 
truth.  And  this  is,  to  a certain  degree,  leaSfmpSant1^ 
true : a man  may  recognize  the  portrait  of  seaPai.? 

his  friend,  though  he  cannot,  if  you  ask  chap‘  ** 
him  apart,  tell  you  the  shape  of  his  nose  or  the  height 
of  his  forehead ; and  everyone  could  tell  nature  herself 
from  an  imitation ; why  not  then,  it  will  be  asked,  what 
is  like  her  from  what  is  not  ? For  this  simple  reason, 
that  we  constantly  recognize  things  by  their  least  impor- 
tant attributes,  and  by  help  of  very  few  of  those,  and  if 
these  attributes  exist  not  in  the  imitation,  though  there 
may  be  thousands  of  others  far  higher  and  more  valua- 
ble, yet  if  those  be  wanting,  or  imperfectly  rendered,  by 
which  we  are  accustomed  to  recognize  the  object,  we  deny 
the  likeness ; while  if  these  be  given,  though  all  the  great 
and  valuable  and  important  attributes  may  be  wanting, 
we  affirm  the  likeness.  Recognition  is  no  proof  of  real 
and  intrinsic  resemblance.  We  recognize  our  books  by 
their  bindings,  though  the  true  and  essential  character- 
istics lie  inside.  A man  is  known  to  his  dog  by  the 
smell — to  his  tailor  by  the  coat  — to  his  friend  by  the 
smile:  each  of  these  know  him,  but  how  little,  or  how 
much,  depends  on  the  dignity  of  the  intelligence.  That 
which  is  truly  and  indeed  characteristic  of  the  man,  is 
known  only  to  God.  One  portrait  of  a man  may  possess 
exact  accuracy  of  feature,  and  no  atom  of  expression ; it 
may  be,  to  use  the  ordinary  terms  of  admiration  bestowed 


136 


TRUTH  NOT  EASILY  DISCERNED. 


on  such  portraits  by  those  whom  they  please,  “ as  like 
as  it  can  stare.”  Everybody,  down  to  his  cat,  would 
know  this.  Another  portrait  may  have  neglected  or  mis- 
represented the  features,  but  may  have  given  the  flash 
of  the  eye,  and  the  peculiar  radiance  of  the  lip,  seen  on 
him  only  in  his  hours  of  highest  mental  excitement. 
None  but  his  friends  would  know  this.  Another  may 
have  given  none  of  his  ordinary  expressions,  but  one 
which  he  wore  in  the  most  excited  instant  of  his  life, 
when  all  his  secret  passions  and  all  his  highest  powers 
were  brought  into  play  at  once.  None  but  those  who 
had  then  seen  him  might  recognize  this  as  like.  But 
which  would  be  the  most  truthful  portrait  of  the  man  ? 
The  first  gives  the  accidents  of  body — the  sport  of  cli- 
mate, and  food,  and  time — which  corruption  inhabits,  and 
the  worm  waits  for.  The  second  gives  the  stamp  of  the 
soul  upon  the  flesh ; but  it  is  the  soul  seen  in  the  emo- 
tions which  it  shares  with  many — which  may  not  be 
characteristic  of  its  essence — the  results  of  habit,  and 
education,  and  accident  — a gloze,  whether  purposely 
worn  or  unconsciously  assumed,  perhaps  totally  contrary 
to  all  that  is  rooted  and  real  in  the  mind  that  it  conceals. 
The  third  has  caught  the  trace  of  all  that  was  most  hid- 
den and  most  mighty,  when  all  hypocrisy,  and  all  habit, 
and  all  petty  and  passing  emotion — the  ice,  and  the  bank, 
and  the  foam  of  the  immortal  river — were  shivered,  and 
broken,  and  swallowed  up  in  the  awakening  of  its  inward 
strength ; when  the  call  and  claim  of  some  divine  motive 
had  brought  into  visible  being  those  latent  forces  and 
feelings  which  the  spirit’s  own  volition  could  not  sum- 
mon, nor  its  consciousness  comprehend ; which  God  only 
knew,  and  God  only  could  awaken,  the  depth  and  the 
mystery  of  its  peculiar  and  separating  attributes.  And 
so  it  is  with  external  Nature : she  has  a body  and  a soul 
like  man ; but  her  soul  is  the  Deity.  It  is  possible  to 
represent  the  body  without  the  spirit ; and  this  shall  be 


TRUTH  NOT  EASILY  DISCERNED. 


137 


like  to  those  whose  senses  are  only  cognizant  of  body. 
It  is  possible  to  represent  the  spirit  in  its  ordinary  and 
inferior  manifestations ; and  this  shall  be  like  to  those 
who  have  not  watched  for  its  moments  of  power.  It  is 
possible  to  represent  the  spirit  in  its  secret  and  high 
operations ; and  this  shall  be  like  only  to  those  to  whose 
watching  they  have  been  revealed.  All  these  are  truth  ; 
but  according  to  the  dignity  of  the  truths  he  can  repre- 
sent or  feel,  is  the  power  of  the  painter, — the  justice  of 
the  judge. 


CHAPTEB  m. 


OF  THE  RELATIVE  IMPORTANCE  OF  TRUTHS: — FIRST,  THAT 
PARTICULAR  TRUTHS  ARE  MORE  IMPORTANT  THAN  GEN- 
ERAL ONES. 


§ 1. 

determining  the 
relative  impor 
tance  of  truths. 


I have  in  the  last  chapter  affirmed  that  we  usually  re- 
cognize objects  by  their  least  essential  characteristics. 
This  very  naturally  excites  the  inquiry  what  I consider 
Necessity  of  their  important  characteristics,  and  why  I 
call  one  truth  more  important  than  an- 
other. And  this  question  must  be  im- 
mediately determined,  because  it  is  evident,  that  in 
judging  of  the  truth  of  painters,  we  shall  have  to  con- 
sider not  only  the  accuracy  with  which  individual 
truths  are  given,  but  the  relative  importance  of  the 
truths  themselves ; for  as  it  constantly  happens  that  the 
powers  of  art  are  unable  to  render  all  truths,  that 
artist  must  be  considered  the  most  truthful  who  has 
preserved  the  most  important  at  the  expense  of  the 
most  trifling. 

Now  if  we  are  to  begin  our  investigation  in  Aristotle’s 
way,  and  look  at  the  tpaivo/jicva  of  the  subject,  we  shall 
immediately  stumble  over  a maxim  which 
is  in  everybody’s  mouth,  and  which,  as  it 
is  understood  in  practice,  is  true  and  use- 
ful, as  it  is  usually  applied  in  argument, 
false  and  misleading.  “ General  truths  are  more  impor- 
tant than  particular  ones.”  Often,  when  in  conversation, 
I have  been  praising  Turner  for  his  perpetual  variety, 
and  for  giving  so  particular  and  separate  a character  to 


§ 2.  Misapplica- 
tion of  the  aph- 
orism : “ General 
truths  are  more 
important  than 
particular  ones.” 


IMPORTANCE  OF  TRUTHS. 


139 


each,  of  his  compositions,  that  the  mind  of  the  painter 
can  only  be  estimated  by  seeing  all  that  he  has  ever 
done,  and  that  nothing  can  be  prophesied  of  a picture 
coming  into  existence  on  his  easel,  but  that  it  will  be 
totally  different  in  idea  from  all  that  he  has  ever  done 
before;  and  when  I have  opposed  this  inexhaustible 
knowledge  or  imagination,  whichever  it  may  be,  to  the 
perpetual  repetition  of  some  half-dozen  conceptions  by 
Claude  and  Poussin,  I have  been  met  by  the  formidable 
objection,  enunciated  with  much  dignity  and  self-satis- 
faction on  the  part  of  my  antagonist — “ That  is  not  paint- 
ing general  truths,  that  is  painting  partic-  § Yaiaeness  of 
ular  truths.”  Now  there  must  be  some- 
thing  wrong  in  that  application  of  a prin-  tl0U- 
ciple  which  would  make  the  variety  and  abundance  which 
we  look  for  as  the  greatest  sign  of  intellect  in  the  writer, 
the  greatest  sign  of  error  in  the  painter ; and  we  shall 
accordingly  see,  by  an  application  of  it  to  other  matters, 
that,  taken  without  limitation,  the  whole  proposition  is 
utterly  false.  For  instance,  Mrs.  Jameson  somewhere 
mentions  the  exclamation  of  a lady  of  her  acquaintance, 
more  desirous  to  fill  a pause  in  conversation  than  abun- 
dant in  sources  of  observation : “ What  an  excellent  book 
the  Bible  is  ! ” This  was  a very  general  truth  indeed,  a 
truth  predicable  of  the  Bible  in  common  with  many 
other  books,  but  it  certainly  is  neither  striking  nor  im- 
portant. Had  the  lady  exclaimed — “ How  evidently  is 
the  Bible  a divine  revelation ! ” she  would  have  expressed 
a particular  truth,  one  predicable  of  the  Bible  only; 
but  certainly  far  more  interesting  and  important.  Had 
she,  on  the  contrary,  informed  us  that  the  Bible  was  a 
book,  she  would  have  been  still  more  general,  and  still 
less  entertaining.  If  I ask  anyone  who  somebody  else 
is,  and  receive  for  answer  that  he  is  a man,  I get  little 
satisfaction  for  my  pains ; but  if  I am  told  that  he  is  Sir 
Isaac  Newton,  I immediately  thank  my  neighbor  for  his 


140 


OF  THE  RELATIVE 


information.  The  fact  is,  and  the  above  instances  may 
serve  at  once  to  prove  it  if  it  be  not  self-evident,  that 
§4.  Generality  generality  gives  importance  to  the  subject, 
siSe?tanfeparticu-  anc^  limitation  or  particularity  to  the  predi- 
lanty  m tbe  predi-  cate.  If  I say  that  such  and  such  a man 
in  China  is  an  opium-eater,  I say  nothing 
very  interesting,  because  my  subject  (such  a man)  is 
particular.  If  I say  that  all  men  in  China  are  opium- 
eaters,  I say  something  interesting,  because  my  subject 
(all  men)  is  general.  If  I say  that  all  men  in  China  eat, 
I say  nothing  interesting,  because  my  predicate  (eat)  is 
general.  If  I say  that  all  men  in  China  eat  opium,  I say 
something  interesting,  because  my  predicate  (eat  opium) 
is  particular. 

Now  almost  everything  which  (with  reference  to  a 
given  subject)  a painter  has  to  ask  himself  whether  he 
shall  represent  or  not,  is  a predicate.  Hence  in  art,  par- 
ticular truths  are  usually  more  important  than  general 
ones. 

How  is  it  then  that  anything  so  plain  as  this  should 
be  contradicted  by  one  of  the  most  universally  received 
aphorisms  respecting  art  ? A little  reflection  will  show 
us  under  what  limitations  this  maxim  may  be  true  in 
practice. 

It  is  self-evident  that  when  we  are  painting  or  de- 
scribing anything,  those  truths  must  be  the  most  impor- 
tant which  are  most  characteristic  of  what 
tance  of  1tr£§w  is  to  be  told  or  represented.  Now  that 

of  species  is  not  i • 1 ® i?  i i_i  n i 

owing  to  their  which  is  first  and  most  broadly  character- 
generality.  istie  of  a thing,  is  that  which  distinguishes 

its  genus,  or  which  makes  it  what  it  is.  For  instance, 
that  which  makes  drapery  he  drapery,  is  not  its  being 
made  of  silk  or  worsted  or  flax,  for  things  are  made  of  all 
these  which  are  not  drapery,  but  the  ideas  peculiar  to 
drapery;  the  properties  which,  when  inherent  in  a 
thing,  make  it  drapery,  are  extension,  non-elastic  flexi- 


IMPORTANCE  OF  TRUTHS. 


141 


bility,  unity,  and  comparative  thinness.  Everything 
which  has  these  properties,  a waterfall,  for  instance,  if 
united  and  extended,  or  a net  of  weeds  over  a wall,  is 
drapery,  as  much  as  silk  or  woollen  stuff  is.  So  that 
these  ideas  separate  drapery  in  our  minds  from  every- 
thing else ; they  are  peculiarly  characteristic  of  it,  and 
therefore  are  the  most  important  group  of  ideas  con- 
nected with  it ; and  so  with  everything  else,  that  which 
m&kes  the  thing  what  it  is,  is  the  most  important  idea, 
or  group  of  ideas  connected  with  the  thing.  But  as  this 
idea  must  necessarily  be  common  to  all  individuals  of 
the  species  it  belongs  to,  it  is  a general  idea  with  re- 
pect  to  that  species ; while  other  ideas,  which  are  not 
characteristic  of  the  species,  and  are  therefore  in  reality 
general,  as  black  or  white  are  terms  applicable  to  more 
things  than  drapery,)  are  yet  particular  with  respect  to 
that  species,  being  predicable  only  of  certain  individuals 
of  it.  Hence  it  is  carelessly  and  falsely  said,  that  gen- 
eral ideas  are  more  important  than  particular  ones ; care- 
lessly and  falsely,  I say,  because  the  so-called  general 
idea  is  important,  not  because  it  is  common  to  all  the 
individuals  of  that  species,  but  because  it  separates  that 
species  from  everything  else.  It  is  the  distinctiveness, 
not  the  universality  of  the  truth,  which  renders  it  im- 
portant. And  the  so-called  particular  idea  is  unimpor- 
tant, not  because  it  is  not  predicable  of  the  whole  spe- 
cies, but  because  it  is  predicable  of  things  out  of  that 
species.  It  is  not  its  individuality,  but  its  generality 
which  renders  it  unimportant.  So,  then, 

. . . . . . . • §6.  All  truths  val- 

truths  are  important  just  m proportion  as  liable  as  they  are 

. , . ....  ill  characteristic. 

they  are  characteristic,  and  are  valuable, 
primarily,  as  they  separate  the  species  from  all  other 
created  things ; secondarily,  as  they  separate  the  individ- 
uals of  that  species  from  one  another : thus  “ silken  ” or 
“ woollen  ” are  unimportant  ideas  with  respect  to  drapery, 
because  they  neither  separate  the  species  from  other 


142 


OF  THE  RELATIVE 


things,  nor  even  the  individuals  of  that  species  from  one 
another,  since,  though  not  common  to  the  whole  of  it, 
they  are  common  to  indefinite  numbers  of  it ; but  the 
particular  folds  into  which  any  piece  of  drapery  may 
happen  to  fall,  being  different  in  many  particulars  from 
those  into  which  any  other  piece  of  drapery  will  fall, 
are  expressive  not  only  of  the  characters  of  the  species, 
flexibility  (non-elasticity,  etc.,)  but  of  individuality  and 
definite  character  in  the  case  immediately  observed,  and 
are  consequently  most  important  and  necessary  ideas. 
So  in  a man,  to  be  short-legged  or  long-nosed,  or  any- 
thing else  of  accidental  quality,  does  not  distinguish 
him  from  other  short-legged  or  long-nosed  animals ; but 
the  important  truths  respecting  a man  are,  first,  the 
marked  development  of  that  distinctive  organization 
which  separates  him  as  man  from  other  animals,  and 
secondly,  that  group  of  qualities  which  distinguish  the 
individual  from  all  other  men,  which  make  him  Paul  or 
Judas,  Newton  or  Shakspeare. 

Such  are  the  real  sources  of  importance  in  truths  as  far 
as  they  are  considered  with  reference  merely  to  their  being 
§ 7.  otherwise  general,  or  particular ; but  there  are  other 
are1  yaiuabiepecbe-  sources  of  importance  which  give  farther 
cause  beautiful.  weight  to  the  ordinary  opinion  of  the 

greater  value  of  those  which  are  general,  and  which  ren- 
der this  opinion  right  in  practice ; I mean  the  intrinsic 
beauty  of  the  truths  themselves,  a quality  which  it  is  not 
here  the  place  to  investigate,  but  which  must  just  be 
noticed,  as  invariably  adding  value  to  truths  of  species 
rather  than  to  those  of  individuality.  The  qualities  and 
properties  which  characterize  man  or  any  other  animal 
as  a species,  are  the  perfection  of  his  or  its  form  of  mind, 
almost  all  individual  differences  arising  from  imperfec- 
tions ; hence  a truth  of  species  is  the  more  valuable  to 
art,  because  it  must  always  be  a beauty,  while  a truth  of 
individuals  is  commonly,  in  some  sort  or  way,  a defect. 


IMPORTANCE  OF  TRUTHS. 


143 


§ 8.  And  many 
truths,  valuable 
if  separate,  may 
be  objectionable 
in  connection  with 
others. 


Again,  a truth  which  may  be  of  great  interest,  when 
an  object  is  viewed  by  itself,  may  be  objectionable  when 
it  is  viewed  in  relation  to  other  objects. 

Thus  if  we  were  painting  a piece  of  drapery 
as  our  whole  subject,  it  would  be  proper  to 
give  in  it  every  source  of  entertainment, 
which  particular  truths  could  supply,  to  give  it  varied 
color  and  delicate  texture;  but  if  we  paint  this  same 
piece  of  drapery,  as  part  of  the  dress  of  a Madonna,  all 
these  ideas  of  richness  or  texture  become  thoroughly 
contemptible,  and  unfit  to  occupy  the  mind  at  the  same 
moment  with  the  idea  of  the  Virgin.  The  conception  of 
drapery  is  then  to  be  suggested  by  the  simplest  and 
slightest  means  possible,  and  all  notions  of  texture  and 
detail  are  to  be  rejected  with  utter  reprobation ; but  this, 
observe,  is  not  because  they  are  particular  or  general  or 
anything  else,  with  respect  to  the  drapery  itself,  but 
because  they  draw  the  attention  to  the  dress  instead 
of  the  saint,  and  disturb  and  degrade  the  imagination 
and  the  feelings ; hence  we  ought  to  give  the  conception 
of  the  drapery  in  the  most  unobtrusive  way  possible,  by 
rendering  those  essential  qualities  distinctly,  which  are 
necessary  to  the  very  existence  of  drapery,  and  not  one 
more. 

With  these  last  two  sources  of  the  importance  of  truths, 
we  have  nothing  to  do  at  present,  as  they  are  dependent 
upon  ideas  of  beauty  and  relation : I merely  allude  to 
them  now,  to  show  that  all  that  is  alleged  by  Sir  J.  Rey- 
nolds and  other  scientific  writers  respecting  the  kind 
of  truths  proper  to  be  represented  by  the  painter  or 
sculptor  is  perfectly  just  and  right ; while  yet  the  prin- 
ciple on  which  they  base  their  selection  (that  general 
truths  are  more  important  than  particular  ones)  is  alto- 
gether false.  Canova’s  Perseus  in  the  Vatican  is  entirely 
spoiled  by  an  unlucky  tassel  in  the  folds  of  the  mantle 
(which  the  next  admirer  of  Canova  who  passes  would  do 


144 


IMPORTANCE  OF  TRUTHS. 


well  to  knock  off ;)  but  it  is  spoiled  not  because  this  is  a 
particular  truth,  but  because  it  is  a contemptible,  unnec- 
essary, and  ugly  truth.  The  button  which  fastens  the 
vest  of  the  Sistine  Daniel  is  as  much  a particular  truth 
as  this,  but  it  is  a necessary  one,  and  the  idea  of  it  is 
given  by  the  simplest  possible  means ; hence  it  is  right 
and  beautiful. 

Finally,  then,  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  all  truths  as 
far  as  their  being  particular  or  general  affects  their  value 
§ 9.  Recapituia-  a^  are  valuable  in  proportion  as  they 
tion-  are  particular,  and  valueless  in  proportion 

as  they  are  general;  or  to  express  the  proposition  in 
simpler  terms,  every  truth  is  valuable  in  proportion  as  it 
is  characteristic  of  the  thing  of  which  it  is  affirmed. 


CHAPTER  IV. 


OF  THE  RELATIVE  IMPORTANCE  OF  TRUTHS SECONDLY,  THAT 
RARE  TRUTHS  ARE  MORE  IMPORTANT  THAN  FREQUENT 
ONES. 

It  will  be  necessary  next  for  us  to  determine  how  far 
frequency  or  rarity  can  affect  the  importance  of  truths, 
and  whether  the  artist  is  to  be  considered  the  most 
truthful  who  paints  what  is  common  or 

, . , . § 1.  No  accidental 

what  is  unusual  m nature.  violation  of  nat- 

Now  the  whole  determination  of  this  should  Ke^epr? 
question  depends  upon  whether  the  un- 
usual fact  be  a violation  of  nature’s  general  principles, 
or  the  application  of  some  of  those  principles  in  a pe- 
culiar and  striking  way.  Nature  sometimes,  though  very 
rarely,  violates  her  own  principles ; it  is  her  principle 
to  make  everything  beautiful,  but  now  and  then,  for  an 
instant,  she  permits  what,  compared  with  the  rest  of  her 
works,  might  be  called  ugly ; it  is  true  that  even  these 
rare  blemishes  are  permitted,  as  I have  above  said,  for  a 
good  purpose,  (Part  I.  Sec.  I.  Chap.  5,)  they  are  valua- 
ble in  nature,  and  used  as  she  uses  them,  are  equally 
valuable  (as  instantaneous  discords)  in  art ; but  the  ar- 
tist who  should  seek  after  these  exclusively,  and  paint 
nothing  else,  though  he  might  be  able  to  point  to  some- 
thing in  nature  as  the  original  of  every  one  of  his  ugli- 
nesses, would  yet  be,  in  the  strict  sense  of  the  word, 
false, — false  to  nature,  and  disobedient  to  her  laws.  For 
instance,  it  is  the  practice  of  nature  to  give  character  to 
the  outlines  of  her  clouds,  by  perpetual  angles  and  right 
lines.  Perhaps  once  in  a month,  by  diligent  watching, 
10 


146 


OF  THE  RELATIVE 


we  might  be  able  to  see  a cloud  altogether  rounded  and 
made  up  of  curves;  but  the  artist  who  paints  nothing 
but  curved  clouds  must  yet  be  considered  thoroughly 
and  inexcusably  false. 

But  the  case  is  widely  different,  when  instead  of  a 
principle  violated,  we  have  one  extraordinarily  carried 
„ _ out  or  manifested  under  unusual  circum- 

§ 2.  But  the  cases 

1 rindSe?  h^ve  slances-  Though  nature  is  constantly 
exemplified Mngly  beautiful,  s^e  does  no^  exhibit  her  highest 
powers  of  beauty  constantly,  for  then  they 
would  satiate  us  and  pall  upon  our  senses.  It  is  neces- 
sary to  their  appreciation  that  they  should  be  rarely 
k g wh.  h e shown.  Her  finest  touches  are  things 
comparatively  which  must  be  watched  for;  her  most  per- 
fect passages  of  beauty  are  the  most  evan- 
escent. She  is  constantly  doing  something  beautiful  for 
us,  but  it  is  something  which  she  has  not  done  before 
and  will  not  do  again ; some  exhibition  of  her  general 
powers  in  particular  circumstances  which,  if  we  do  not 
catch  at  the  instant  it  is  passing,  will  not  be  repeated 
for  us.  Now  they  are  these  evanescent  passages  of 
perfected  beauty,  these  perpetually  varied  examples  of 
utmost  power,  which  the  artist  ought  to  seek  for  and 
arrest.  No  supposition  can  be  more  absurd  than  that 
effects  or  truths  frequently  exhibited  are  more  character- 
istic of  nature  than  those  which  are  equally  necessary 
by  her  laws,  though  rarer  in  occurrence.  Both  the  fre- 
quent and  the  rare  are  parts  of  the  same  great  system ; 
to  give  either  exclusively  is  imperfect  truth,  and  to 
repeat  the  same  effect  or  thought  in  two  pictures  is 

§4  ah  repetition  wasled  life-  What  should  we  think  of  a 
is  biamabie.  poet  who  should  keep  all  his  life  repeating 
the  same  thought  in  different  words  ? and  why  should  we 
be  more  lenient  to  the  parrot-painter  who  has  learned  one 
lesson  from  the  page  of  nature,  and  keeps  stammering 
it  out  with  eternal  repetition  without  turning  the  leaf  ? 


IMPORTANCE  OF  TRUTHS. 


147 


Is  it  less  tautology  to  describe  a thing  over  and  over 
again  with  lines,  than  it  is  with  words  ? The  teaching 
of  nature  is  as  varied  and  infinite  as  it  is  constant ; and 
the  duty  of  the  painter  is  to  watch  for  every  one  of  her 
lessons,  and  to  give  (for  human  life  will  admit  of  nothing 
more)  those  in  which  she  has  manifested  each  of  her 
principles  in  the  most  peculiar  and  striking  way.  The 
deeper  his  research  and  the  rarer  the  phenomena  he  has 
noted,  the  more  valuable  will  his  works  be  ; to  repeat 
himself,  even  in  a single  instance,  is  treachery  to  nature, 
for  a thousand  human  lives  would  not  be  enough  to  give 
one  instance  of  the  perfect  manifestation  of  each  of  her 
powers ; and  as  for  combining  or  classifying  them,  as 
well  might  a preacher  expect  in  one  sermon  to  express 
and  explain  every  divine  truth  which  can  be  gathered 
out  of  God’s  revelation,  as  a painter  expect  in  one  com- 
position to  express  and  illustrate  every  lesson  which 
can  be  received  from  God’s  creation.  § 5>  The  duty  of 
Both  are  commentators  on  infinity,  and  sam?a?thati8ofha 
the  duty  of  both  is  to  take  for  each  dis-  Preacher- 
course  one  essential  truth,  seeking  particularly  and  in- 
sisting especially  on  those  which  are  less  palpable  to 
ordinary  observation,  and  more  likely  to  escape  an  indo- 
lent research ; and  to  impress  that,  and  that  alone,  upon 
those  whom  they  address,  with  every  illustration  that 
can  be  furnished  by  their  knowledge,  and  every  adorn- 
ment attainable  by  their  power.  And  the  real  truthful- 
ness of  the  painter  is  in  proportion  to  the  number  and 
variety  of  the  facts  he  has  so  illustrated;  those  facts 
being  always,  as  above  observed,  the  realization,  not  the 
violation  of  a general  principle.  The  quantity  of  truth 
is  in  proportion  to  the  number  of  such  facts,  and  its 
value  and  instructiveness  in  proportion  to  their  rarity. 
All  really  great  pictures,  therefore,  exhibit  the  general 
habits  of  nature,  manifested  in  some  peculiar,  rare,  and 
beautiful  way. 


CHAPTER  Y. 


OF  THE  RELATIVE  IMPORTANCE  OF  TRUTHS THIRDLY,  THAT 
TRUTHS  OF  COLOR  ARE  THE  LEAST  IMPORTANT  OF  ALL 
TRUTHS. 

In  the  two  last  chapters,  we  have  pointed  out  general 
tests  of  the  importance  of  all  truths,  which  will  be  suffi- 
cient at  once  to  distinguish  certain  classes  of  properties 
§ i.  Difference  be-  bodies,  as  more  necessary  to  be  told 

than  others,  because  more  characteristic, 
ties  in  bodies.  either  of  the  particular  thing  to  be  repre- 
sented, or  of  the  principles  of  nature. 

According  to  Locke,  Book  ii.  chap.  8,  there  are  three 
sorts  of  qualities  in  bodies : first,  the  “ bulk,  figure,  num- 
ber, situation,  and  motion  or  rest  of  their  solid  parts : 
those  that  are  in  them,  whether  we  perceive  them  or 
not.”  These  he  calls  primary  qualities.  Secondly, 
“ the  power  that  is  in  any  body  to  operate  after  a pecul- 
iar manner  on  any  of  our  senses,”  (sensible  qualities.) 
And  thirdly,  “ the  power  that  is  in  any  body  to  make 
such  a change  in  another  body  as  that  it  shall  operate  on 
our  senses  differently  from  what  it  did  before : these  last 
being  usually  called  poivers .” 

Hence  he  proceeds  to  prove  that  those  which  he  calls 
primary  qualities  are  indeed  part  of  the  essence  of  the 
§ 2.  The  first  are  body,  and  characteristic  of  it ; but  that  the 
tic/tbe^ctm^im-  two  other  kinds  of  qualities  which  together 
perfectly  so.  he  calls  secondary,  are  neither  of  them 
more  than  powers  of  producing  on  other  objects,  or  in 
us,  certain  effects  and  sensations.  Now  a power  of  influ- 
ence is  always  equally  characteristic  of  two  objects — the 


IMPORTANCE  OF  TRUTHS . 


149 


active  and  passive;  for  it  is  as  much  necessary  that 
there  should  be  a power  in  the  object  suffering  to 
receive  the  impression,  as  in  the  object  acting  to  give 
the  impression.  (Compare  Locke,  Book  ii.  chap.  21, 
sect.  2.)  For  supposing  two  people,  as  is  frequently  the 
case,  perceive  different  scents  in  the  same  flower,  it  is 
evident  that  the  power  in  the  flower  to  give  this  or  that 
depends  on  the  nature  of  their  nerves,  as  well  as  on  that 
of  its  own  particles ; and  that  we  are  as  correct  in  saying 
it  is  a power  in  us  to  perceive,  as  in  the  object  to 
impress.  Every  power,  therefore,  being  characteristic 
of  the  nature  of  two  bodies,  is  imperfectly  and  incom- 
pletely characteristic  of  either  separately ; but  the  pri- 
mary qualities,  being  characteristic  only  of  the  body  in 
which  they  are  inherent,  are  the  most  important  truths 
connected  with  it.  For  the  question,  what  the  thing  is, 
must  precede,  and  be  of  more  importance  than  the  ques- 
tion, what  can  it  do. 

Now,  by  Locke’s  definition  above  given,  only  bulk,  fig- 
ure, situation,  and  motion  or  rest  of  solid  parts,  are  pri- 
mary qualities.  Hence  all  truths  of  color 
sink  at  once  into  the  second  rank.  He,  § 3-  polor  is  a 
therefore,  who  has  neglected  a truth  of  ^ therefore  less 
form  for  a truth  of  color,  has  neglected  a form- 
greater  truth  for  a less  one. 

And  that  color  is  indeed  a most  unimportant  character- 
istic of  objects,  will  be  farther  evident  on  the  slightest 
consideration.  The  color  of  plants  is  constantly  chang- 
ing with  the  season,  and  of  everything  with  the  quality 
of  light  failing  on  it ; but  the  nature  and  essence  of  the 
thing  are  independent  of  these  changes.  An  oak  is  an 
oak,  whether  green  with  spring  or  red  with  winter;  a 
dahlia  is  a dahlia,  whether  it  be  yellow  or  crimson ; and 
if  some  monster-hunting  botanist  should  ever  frighten 
the  flower  blue,  still  it  will  be  a dahlia ; but  let  one  curve 
of  the  petals — one  groove  of  the  stamens  be  wanting,  and 


150 


OF  THE  RELATIVE 


the  flower  ceases  to  be  the  same.  Let  the  roughness  of 
the  bark  and  the  angles  of  the  boughs  be  smoothed  or 
diminished,  and  the  oak  ceases  to  be  an  oak ; but  let  it 
retain  its  inward  structure  and  outward  form,  and  though 
its  leaves  grew  white,  or  pink,  or  blue,  or  tri  color,  it 
would  be  a white  oak,  or  a pink  oak,  or  a republican  oak, 
but  an  oak  still.  Again,  color  is  hardly  ever  even  a pos- 
sible distinction  between  two  objects  of  the  same  species. 
Two  trees,  of  the  same  kind,  at  the  same  season,  and  of 
the  same  age,  are  of  absolutely  the  same  color ; but  they 
are  not  of  the  same  form,  nor  anything  like  it.  There 
§4  color  no  dis-  can  no  difference  in  the  color  of  two 
object?  ofetwtbe  pieces  of  rock  broken  from  the  same  place ; 
same  species.  but  it  is  impossible  they  should  be  of  the 
same  form.  So  that  form  is  not  only  the  chief  character- 
istic of  species,  but  the  only  characteristic  of  individuals 
of  a species. 

Again,  a color,  in  association  with  other  colors,  is  dif- 
ferent from  the  same  color  seen  by  itself.  It  has  a dis- 
§ 5.  And  different  tinct  and  peculiar  power  upon  the  retina  de- 
fromS  whatatit^is  Pendent  on  its  association.  Consequently, 
alone*  the  color  of  any  object  is  not  more  depend- 

ent upon  the  nature  of  the  object  itself,  and  the 
eye  beholding  it,  than  on  the  color  of  the  objects 
near  it;  in  this  respect  also,  therefore,  it  is  no  char- 
acteristic. 

And  so  great  is  the  uncertainty  with  respect  to  those 
qualities  or  powers  which  depend  as  much  on  the  nature 
A of  the  object  suffering  as  of  the  object  act- 

§ C.  It  is  not  . . ° J 

certain  whether  mg,  that  it  is  totally  impossible  to  prove 
any  two  people  .*  ,,  , , . 

see  the  same  coi-  that  one  man  sees  m the  same  thing  the 
same  color  that  another  does  though  he 
may  use  the  same  name  for  it.  One  man  may  see  yellow 
where  another  sees  blue,  but  as  the  effect  is  constant, 
they  agree  in  the  term  to  be  used  for  it,  and  both  call  it 
blue,  or  both  yellow,  having  yet  totally  different  ideas  at- 


IMPORTANCE  OF  TRUTHS. 


151 


taclied  to  the  term.  And  yet  neither  can  be  said  to  see 
falsely,  because  the  color  is  not  in  the  thing,  but  in  the 
thing  and  them  together.  But  if  they  see  forms  differ- 
ently, one  must  see  falsely,  because  the  form  is  positive 
in  the  object.  My  friend  may  see  boars  blue  for  any- 
thing I know,  but  it  is  impossible  he  should  see  them 
with  paws  instead  of  hoofs,  unless  his  eyes  or  brain  are 
diseased.  (Compare  Locke,  Book  ii.  chajD.  xxxii.  § 15.) 
But  I do  not  speak  of  this  uncertainty  as  capable  of 
having  any  effect  on  art,  because,  though  perhaps  Land- 
seer sees  dogs  of  the  color  which  I should  call  blue,  yet 
the  color  he  puts  on  the  canvas,  being  in  the  same  way 
blue  to  him,  will  still  be  brown  or  dog-color  to  me; 
and  so  we  may  argue  on  points  of  color  just  as  if  all 
men  saw  alike,  as  indeed  in  all  probability  they  do; 
but  I merely  mention  this  uncertainty  to  show  farther 
the  vagueness  and  unimportance  of  color  as  a character- 
istic of  bodies. 

Before  going  farther,  however,  I must  explain  the 
sense  in  which  I have  used  the  word  “ form,”  because 
painters  have  a most  inaccurate  and  care-  „ „ 

* - . § 7.  Form,  con- 

less  habit  of  confining  the  term  to  the  out-  sited  ^as  ^an 
line  of  bodies,  whereas  it  necessarily  implies  scape,  includes 
light  and  shade.  It  is  true  that  the  out-  Il&ht 
line  and  the  chiaroscuro  must  be  separate  subjects  of 
investigation  with  the  student ; but  no  form  whatsoever 
can  be  known  to  the  eye  in  the  slightest  degree  without 
its  chiaroscuro;  and,  therefore,  in  speaking  of  form 
generally  as  an  element  of  landscape,  I mean  that  perfect 
and  harmonious  unity  of  outline  with  light  and  shade,  by 
which  all  the  parts  and  projections  and  proportions  of  a 
body  are  fully  explained  to  the  eye,  being  nevertheless 
perfectly  independent  of  sight  or  power  in  other  objects, 
the  presence  of  light  upon  a body  being  a positive  ex- 
istence, whether  we  are  aware  of  it  or  not,  and  in  no 
degree  dependent  upon  our  senses.  This  being  under- 


152 


OF  THE  RELATIVE 


stood,  the  most  convincing*  proof  of  the  unimportance  of 
color  lies  in  the  accurate  observation  of  the  way  in 
§ a importance  which  any  material  object  impresses  itself 
ii?  elpresskighthe  031  the  mind.  If  we  look  at  nature  careful- 
giaracter  of^bod-  we  shall  find  that  her  colors  are  in  a 
portance  of  color,  state  of  perpetual  confusion  and  indistinct- 
ness, while  her  forms,  as  told  by  light  and  shade,  are 
invariably  clear,  distinct,  and  speaking.  The  stones  and 
gravel  of  the  bank  catch  green  reflections  from  the 
boughs  above;  the  bushes  receive  grays  and  yellows 
from  the  ground ; every  hairbreadth  of  polished  surface 
gives  a little  bit  of  the  blue  of  the  sky  or  the  gold  of  the 
sun,  like  a star  upon  the  local  color;  this  local  color, 
changeful  and  uncertain  in  itself,  is  again  disguised  and 
modified  by  the  hue  of  the  light,  or  quenched  in  the  gray 
of  the  shadow ; and  the  confusion  and  blending  of  tint  is 
altogether  so  great,  that  were  we  left  to  find  out  what 
objects  were  by  their  colors  only,  we  would  scarcely  in 
places  distinguish  the  boughs  of  a tree  from  the  air 
beyond  them,  or  the  ground  beneath  them.  I know  that 
people  unpractised  in  art  will  not  believe  this  at  first ; 
but  if  they  have  accurate  powers  of  observation, 
they  may  soon  ascertain  it  for  themselves;  they  will 
find  that,  while  they  can  scarcely  ever  determine  the 
exact  hue  of  anything,  except  when  it  occurs  in  large 
masses,  as  in  a green  field  or  the  blue  sky,  the  form, 
as  told  by  light  and  shade,  is  always  decided  and 
evident,  and  the  source  of  the  chief  character  of  every 
object.  Light  and  shade  indeed  so  completely  con- 
quer the  distinctions  of  local  color,  that  the  difference 
in  hue  between  the  illumined  parts  of  a white  and 
black  object  is  not  so  great  as  the  difference  (in  sun- 
shine) between  the  illumined  and  dark  side  of  either 
separately. 

We  shall  see  hereafter,  in  considering  ideas  of  beauty, 
that  color,  even  as  a source  of  pleasure,  is  feeble  com- 


IMPORTANCE  OF  TRUTHS . 


153 


pared  to  form ; but  this  we  cannot  insist  upon  at  pres- 
ent ; we  have  only  to  do  with  simple  truth,  and  the  ob- 
servations we  have  made  are  sufficient  to  § 9<  Recapitula. 
prove  that  the  artist  who  sacrifices  or  for-  tion- 
gets  a truth  of  form  in  the  pursuit  of  a truth  of  color, 
sacrifices  what  is  definite  to  what  is  uncertain,  and  what 
is  essential  to  what  is  accidental. 


CHAPTER  VI. 


RECAPITULATION. 


It  ought  farther  to  be  observed  respecting  truths  in 
general,  that  those  are  always  most  valuable  which  are 
most  historical,  that  is,  which  tell  us  most  about  the 

§ 1 The  im  or  Pas^  an(^  ^u^ure  states  of  the  object  to 
tance  of  histori-  which  they  belong.  In  a tree,  for  instance, 
it  is  more  important  to  give  the  appear- 
ance of  energy  and  elasticity  in  the  limbs  which  is  indic- 
ative of  growth  and  life,  than  any  particular  character  of 
leaf,  or  texture  of  bough.  It  is  more  important  that  we 
should  feel  that  the  uppermost  sprays  are  creeping 
higher  and  higher  into  the  sky,  and  be  impressed  with 
the  current  of  life  and  motion  which  is  animating  every 
fibre,  than  that  we  should  know  the  exact  pitch  of  relief 
with  which  those  fibres  are  thrown  out  against  the  sky. 
For  the  first  truths  tell  us  tales  about  the  tree,  about 
what  it  has  been,  and  will  be,  while  the  last  are  charac- 
teristic of  it  only  in  its  present  state,  and  are  in  no  way 
talkative  about  themselves.  Talkative  facts  are  always 
more  interesting  and  more  important  than  silent  ones. 
So  again  the  lines  in  a crag  which  mark  its  stratifica- 
tion, and  how  it  has  been  washed  and  rounded  by  water, 
or  twisted  and  drawn  out  in  fire,  are  more  important, 
because  they  tell  more  than  the  stains  of  the  lichens 
which  change  year  by  year,  and  the  accidental  fissures  of 
frost  or  decomposition ; not  but  that  both  of  these  are 
historical,  but  historical  in  a less  distinct  manner,  and  for 
shorter  periods. 

Hence  in  general  the  truths  of  specific  form  are  the 
first  and  most  important  of  all ; and  next  to  them, 


RECAPITULA  TION \ 


155 


§ 2.  Form,  as  ex- 
plained by  light 
and  shade,  the 
first  of  all  truths. 
Tone,  light  and 
color  are  second- 
ary. 


those  truths  of  chiaroscuro  which  are  necessary  to  make 
us  understand  every  quality  and  part  of  forms,  and  the 
relative  distances  of  objects  among  each 
other,  and  in  consequence  their  relative 
bulks.  Altogether  lower  than  these,  as 
truths,  though  often  most  important  as 
beauties,  stand  all  effects  of  chiaroscuro 
which  are  productive  merely  of  imitations  of  light  and 
tone,  and  all  effects  of  color.  To  make  us  understand 
the  space  of  the  sky,  is  an  end  worthy  of  the  artist’s 
highest  powers ; to  hit  its  particular  blue  or  gold  is  an 
end  to  be  thought  of  when  we  have  accomplished  the 
first,  and  not  till  then. 

Finally,  far  below  all  these  come  those  particular  ac- 
curacies or  tricks  of  chiaroscuro  which  cause  objects 
to  look  projecting  from  the  canvas,  not 
worthy  oi  the  name  ot  truths,  because  chiaroscuro  the 
they  require  for  their  attainment  the  sac- 
rifice of  all  others ; for  not  having  at  our  disposal  the 
same  intensity  of  light  by  which  nature  illustrates  her 
objects,  we  are  obliged,  if  we  would  have  perfect  decep- 
tion in  one,  to  destroy  its  relation  to  the  rest.  (Com- 
pare Sect.  II.  chap.  Y.)  And  thus  he  who  throws  one 
object  out  of  his  picture,  never  lets  the  spectator  into  it. 
Michael  Angelo  bids  you  follow  his  phantoms  into  the 
abyss  of  heaven,  but  a modern  French  painter  drops  his 
hero  out  of  the  picture  frame. 

This  solidity  or  projection  then,  is  the  very  lowest 
truth  that  art  can  give ; it  is  the  painting  of  mere  mat- 
ter, giving  that  as  food  for  the  eye  which  is  properly 
only  the  subject  of  touch;  it  can  neither  instruct  nor 
exalt,  nor  please  except  as  jugglery ; it  addresses  no 
sense  of  beauty  nor  of  power ; and  wherever  it  charac- 
terizes the  general  aim  of  a picture,  it  is  the  sign  and 
the  evidence  of  the  vilest  and  lowest  mechanism  which 
art  can  be  insulted  by  giving  name  to. 


CHAPTEB  YU. 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF  THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 

We  have  seen,  in  the  preceding  chapters,  some  proof 
of  what  was  before  asserted,  that  the  truths  necessary 
for  deceptive  imitation  are  not  only  few,  but  of  the 
§ i.  The  different  very  lowest  order.  W e thus  find  painters 
conseouenfo^the  ranging  themselves  into  two  great  classes ; 
Station aiISr  at  one  aiming  at  the  development  of  the 
fcruth*  exquisite  truths  of  specific  form,  refined 

color,  and  ethereal  space,  and  content  with  the  clear  and 
impressive  suggestion  of  any  of  these,  by  whatsoever 
means  obtained ; and  the  other  casting  all  these  aside, 
to  attain  those  p articular  truths  of  tone  and  chiaroscuro, 
which  may  trick  the  spectator  into  a belief  of  reality. 
The  first  class,  if  they  have  to  paint  a tree,  are  intent 
upon  giving  the  exquisite  designs  of  intersecting  undu- 
lation in  its  boughs,  the  grace  of  its  leafage,  the  intri- 
cacy of  its  organization,  and  all  those  qualities  which 
make  it  lovely  or  affecting  of  its  kind.  The  second 
endeavor  only  to  make  you  believe  that  you  are  look- 
ing at  wood.  They  are  totally  regardless  of  truths  or 
beauties  of  form  ; a stump  is  as  good  as  a trunk  for  all 
their  purposes,  so  that  they  can  only  deceive  the  eye 
into  the  supposition  that  it  is  a stump  and  not  canvas. 

§ 2.  The  old  mas-  To  which  of  these  classes  the  great  body 
aim  only  at  imita-  ^ie  °hl  landscape  painters  belonged, 
tion*  may  be  partly  gathered  from  the  kind  of 

praise  which  is  bestowed  upon  them  by  those  who  ad- 
mire them  most,  which  either  refers  to  technical  mat- 


APPLICATION  OF  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES . 157 

ters,  dexterity  of  touch,  clever  oppositions  of  color,  etc., 
or  is  bestowed  on  the  power  of  the  painter  to  deceive. 
M.  de  Marmontel,  going  into  a connoisseur’s  gallery, 
pretends  to  mistake  a fine  Berghem  for  a window.  This, 
he  says,  was  affirmed  by  its  possessor  to  be  the  greatest 
praise  the  picture  had  ever  received.  Such  is  indeed 
the  notion  of  art  which  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  venera- 
tion usually  felt  for  the  old  landscape  painters ; it  is  of 
course  the  palpable,  first  idea  of  ignorance;  it  is  the 
only  notion  which  people  unacquainted  with  art  can  by 
any  possibility  have  of  its  ends  ; the  only  test  by  which 
people  unacquainted  with  nature  can  pretend  to  form 
anything  like  judgment  of  art.  It  is  strange  that,  with 
the  great  historical  painters  of  Italy  before  them,  who 
had  broken  so  boldly  and  indignantly  from  the  trammels 
of  this  notion,  and  shaken  the  very  dust  of  it  from  their 
feet,  the  succeeding  landscape  painters  should  have 
wasted  their  lives  in  jugglery  : but  so  it  is,  and  so  it  will 
be  felt,  the  more  we  look  into  their  works,  that  the  de- 
ception of  the  senses  was  the  great  and  §3>  What  truths 
first  end  of  all  their  art.  To  attain  this  they  gave- 
they  paid  deep  and  serious  attention  to  effects  of  light 
and  tone,  and  to  the  exact  degree  of  relief  which  material 
objects  take  against  light  and  atmosphere ; and  sacri- 
ficing every  other  truth  to  these,  not  necessarily,  but 
because  they  required  no  others  for  deception,  they 
succeeded  in  rendering  these  particular  facts  with  a 
fidelity  and  force  which,  in  the  pictures  that  have  come 
down  to  us  uninjured,  are  as  yet  unequalled,  and  never 
can  be  surpassed.  They  painted  their  foregrounds  with 
laborious  industry,  covering  them  with  details  so  as  to 
render  them  deceptive  to  the  ordinary  eye,  regardless  of 
beauty  or  truth  in  the  details  themselves  ; they  painted 
their  trees  with  careful  attention  to  their  pitch  of  shade 
against  the  sky,  utterly  regardless  of  all  that  is  beauti- 
ful or  essential  in  the  anatomy  of  their  foliage  and 


158 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


boughs : they  painted  their  distances  with  exquisite  use 
of  transparent  color  and  aerial  tone,  totally  neglectful  of 
all  facts  and  forms  which  nature  uses  such  color  and 
tone  to  relieve  and  adorn.  They  had  neither  love  of 
nature,  nor  feeling  of  her  beauty ; they  looked  for  her 
coldest  and  most  commonplace  effects,  because  they 
were  easiest  to  imitate  ; and  for  her  most  vulgar  forms, 
because  they  were  most  easily  to  be  recognized  by  the 
untaught  eyes  of  those  whom  alone  they  could  hope  to 
please ; they  did  it,  like  the  Pharisee  of  old,  to  be  seen 
of  men,  and  they  had  their  reward.  They  do  deceive 
and  delight  the  unpractised  eye ; they  will  to  all  ages, 
as  long  as  their  colors  endure,  be  the  standards  of  ex- 
cellence with  all,  who,  ignorant  of  nature,  claim  to  be 
thought  learned  in  art.  And  they  will  to  all  ages  be,  to 
those  who  have  thorough  love  and  knowledge  of  the 
creation  which  they  libel,  instructive  proofs  of  the  lim- 
ited number  and  low  character  of  the  truths  which  are 
necessary,  and  the  accumulated  multitude  of  pure, 
broad,  bold  falsehoods  which  are  admissible  in  pictures 
meant  only  to  deceive. 

There  is  of  course  more  or  less  accuracy  of  knowledge 
and  execution  combined  with  this  aim  at  effect,  accord- 
ing to  the  industry  and  precision  of  eye  possessed  by 
the  master,  and  more  or  less  of  beauty  in  the  forms  se- 
lected, according  to  his  natural  taste ; but  both  the 
beauty  and  truth  are  sacrificed  unhesitatingly  where 
they  interfere  with  the  great  effort  at  deception. 
Claude  had,  if  it  had  been  cultivated,  a fine  feeling  for 
beauty  of  form,  and  is  seldom  ungraceful  in  his  foliage  ; 
but  his  picture,  when  examined  with  reference  to  essen- 
tial truth,  is  one  mass  of  error  from  beginning  to  end. 
Cuyp,  on  the  other  hand,  could  paint  close  truth  of 
everything,  except  ground  and  water,  with  decision  and 
success,  but  he  has  no  sense  of  beauty.  Gaspar  Poussin, 
more  ignorant  of  truth  than  Claude,  and  almost  as  dead 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


159 


to  beauty  as  Cuyp,  has  yet  a perception  of  the  feeling1 
and  moral  truth  of  nature  which  often  redeems  the  pict- 
ure ; but  yet  in  all  of  them,  everything  that  they  can  do 
is  done  for  deception,  and  nothing  for  the  sake  or  love 
of  what  they  are  painting. 

Modern  landscape  painters  have  looked  at  nature  with 
totally  different  eyes,  seeking  not  for  what  is  easiest  to 
imitate,  but  for  what  is  most  important  to  § 4>  The  princi_ 
tell.  Eejecting  at  once  all  ideal  of  bona  ^e08pt°|  byieSo£ 
fide  imitation,  they  think  only  of  convey-  ern  arti8ts- 
ing  the  impression  of  nature  into  the  mind  of  the  spec- 
tator. And'  there  is,  in  consequence,  a greater  sum  of 
valuable,  essential,  and  impressive  truth  in  the  works  of 
two  or  three  of  our  leading  modern  landscape  painters, 
than  in  those  of  all  the  old  masters  put  together,  and 
of  truth  too,  nearly  unmixed  with  definite  or  avoidable 
falsehood ; while  the  unimportant  and  feeble  truths  of 
the  old  masters  are  choked  with  a mass  of  perpetual 
defiance  of  the  most  authoritative  laws  of  nature. 

I do  not  expect  this  assertion  to  be  believed  at  pres- 
ent ; it  must  rest  for  demonstration  on  the  examination 
we  are  about  to  enter  upon  ; yet,  even  without  reference 
to  any  intricate  or  deep-laid  truths,  it  appears  strange  to 
me,  that  anyone  familiar  with  nature,  and  fond  of  her, 
should  not  grow  weary  and  sick  at  heart  among  the 
melancholy  and  monotonous  transcripts  of  her  which 
alone  can  be  received  from  the  old  school 


p i * i i i 1 1 *8  -«  § 6.  General  feel- 

of  art.  A man  accustomed  to  the  broad,  ing  of  ciaude, 

M,  •j-i'i  -j-iji  i Salvator,  and  G. 

sea-shore,  with  its  bright  breakers,  Poussin,  con- 

P . -j  t t trasted  with  the 

and  tree  winds,  and  sounding  rocks,  and  freedom  and  vast- 
eternal  sensation  of  tameless  power,  can 
scarcely  but  be  angered  when  Claude  bids  him  stand 
still  on  some  paltry,  chipped  and  chiselled  quay  with 


porters  and  wheelbarrows  running  against  him,  to  watch 
a weak,  rippling  bound  and  barriered  water,  that  has  not 


strength  enough  in  one  of  its  waves  to  upset  the  flower- 


160 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


pots  on  the  wall,  or  even  to  fling*  one  jet  of  spray  over 
the  confining  stone.  A man  accustomed  to  the  strength 
and  glory  of  God’s  mountains,  with  their  soaring  and 
radiant  pinnacles,  and  surging  sweeps  of  measureless 
distance,  kingdoms  in  their  valleys,  and  climates  upon 
their  crests,  can  scarcely  but  be  angered  when  Salvator 
bids  him  stand  still  under  some  contemptible  fragment 
of  splintery  crag,  which  an  Alpine  snow-wreath  would 
smother  in  its  first  swell,  with  a stunted  bush  or  two 
growing  out  of  it,  and  a volume  of  manufactory  smoke 
for  a sky.  A man  accustomed  to  the  grace  and  infin- 
ity of  nature’s  foliage,  with  every  vista  a cathedral,  and 
every  bough  a revelation,  can  scarcely  but  be  angered 
when  Poussin  mocks  him  with  a black  round  mass  of 
impenetrable  paint,  diverging  into  feathers  instead  of 
leaves,  and  supported  on  a stick  instead  of  a trunk.  The 
fact  is,  there  is  one  thing  wanting  in  all  the  doing  of 
these  men,  and  that  is  the  very  virtue  by  which  the  work 
of  human  mind  chiefly  rises  above  that  of  the  Daguerreo- 
type or  Calotype,  or  any  other  mechanical  means  that 
ever  have  been  or  may  be  invented,  Love : There  is  no 
evidence  of  their  ever  having  gone  to  nature  with  any 
thirst,  or  received  from  her  such  emotion  as  could  make 
them,  even  for  an  instant,  lose  sight  of  themselves ; there 
is  in  them  neither  earnestness  nor  humility ; there  is  no 
simple  or  honest  record  of  any  single  truth  ; none  of  the 
plain  words  nor  straight  efforts  that  men  speak  and  make 
when  they  once  feel. 

Nor  is  it  only  by  the  professed  landscape  painters  that 
the  great  verities  of  the  material  world  are  betrayed : 

§ 6 inadequacy  ^ran(^  as  are  the  motives  of  landscape  in 
of  Tufan  andSTm-  the  works  of  the  earlier  and  mightier  men, 
toret*  there  is  yet  in  them  nothing  approaching 

to  a general  view  nor  complete  rendering  of  natural 
phenomena;  not  that  they  are  to  be  blamed  for  this-, 
for  they  took  out  of  nature  that  which  was  fit  for  their 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


161 


purpose,  and  their  mission  was  to  do  no  more ; but  we 
must  be  cautious  to  distinguish  that  imaginative  abstrac- 
tion of  landscape  which  alone  we  find  in  them,  from  the 
entire  statement  of  truth  which  has  been  attempted  by 
the  modems.  I have  said  in  the  chapter  on  symmetry 
in  the  second  volume,  that  all  landscape  grandeur  van- 
ishes before  that  of  Titian  and  Tintoret ; and  this  is  true 
of  whatever  these  two  giants  touched ; — but  they  touched 
little.  A few  level  flakes  of  chestnut  foliage;  a blue 
abstraction  of  hill  forms  from  Cadore  or  the  Euganeans ; 
a grand  mass  or  two  of  glowing  ground  and  mighty 
herbage,  and  a few  burning  fields  of  quiet  cloud  were  all 
they  needed ; there  is  evidence  of  Tintoret’s  having  felt 
more  than  this,  but  it  occurs  only  in  secondary  fragments 
of  rock,  cloud,  or  pine,  hardly  noticed  among  the  accu- 
mulated interest  of  his  human  subject.  From  the  win- 
dow of  Titian’s  house  at  Yenice,  the  chain  of  the  Tyro- 
lese Alps  is  seen  lifted  in  spectral  power  above  the 
tufted  plain  of  Treviso ; every  dawn  that  reddens  the 
towers  of  Murano  lights  also  a line  of  pyramidal  fires 
along  that  colossal  ridge  ; but  there  is,  so  far  as  I know, 
no  evidence  in  any  of  the  master’s  works  of  his  ever  hav- 
ing beheld,  much  less  felt,  the  majesty  of  their  burning. 
The  dark  firmament  and  saddened  twilight  of  Tintoret 
are  sufficient  for  their  end ; but  the  sun  never  plunges 
behind  San  Giorgio  in  Aliga  without  such  retinue  of 
radiant  cloud,  such  rest  of  zoned  light  on  the  green  la- 
goon, as  never  received  image  from  his  hand.  More 
than  this,  of  that  which  they  loved  and  rendered  much 
is  rendered  conventionally ; by  noble  conventionalities 
indeed,  but  such  nevertheless  as  would  be  inexcusable  if 
the  landscape  became  the  principal  subject  instead  of 
an  accompaniment.  I will  instance  only  the  San  Pietro 
Martire,  which,  if  not  the  most  perfect,  is  at  least  the 
most  popular  of  Titian’s  landscapes ; in  which,  to  obtain 
light  on  the  flesh  of  the  near  figures  the  sky  is  made  as 
11 


162 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


dark  as  deep  sea,  the  mountains  are  laid  in  with  violent 
and  impossible  blue,  except  one  of  them  on  the  left, 
which,  to  connect  the  distant  light  with  the  foreground, 
is  thrown  into  light  relief,  unexplained  by  its  materials, 
unlikely  in  its  position,  and  in  its  degree  impossible 
under  any  circumstances. 

I do  not  instance  these  as  faults  in  the  picture  : there 
are  no  works  of  very  powerful  color  which  are  free  from 
s 7.  causes  of  its  conventionality  concentrated  or  diffused, 
on111  Subsequent  daring  or  disguised ; but  as  the  conven- 
schoois.  tionality  of  this  whole  picture  is  mainly 

thrown  into  the  landscape,  it  is  necessary,  while  we  ac- 
knowledge the  virtue  of  this  distance  as  a part  of  the 
great  composition,  to  be  on  our  guard  against  the  license 
it  assumes  and  the  attractiveness  of  its  overcharged 
color.  Fragments  of  far  purer  truth  occur  in  the  works 
of  Tintoret ; and  in  the  drawing  of  foliage,  whether 
rapid  or  elaborate,  of  masses  or  details,  the  Venetian 
painters,  taken  as  a body,  may  be  considered  almost 
faultless  models.  But  the  whole  field  of  what  they  have 
done  is  so  narrow,  and  therein  is  so  much  of  what  is  only 
relatively  right,  and  in  itself  false  or  imperfect,  that  the 
young  and  inexperienced  painter  could  run  no  greater 
risk  than  the  too  early  taking  them  for  teachers ; and  to 
the  general  spectator  their  landscape  is  valuable  rather 
as  a means  of  peculiar  and  solemn  emotion  than  as  min- 
istering to,  or  inspiring  the  universal  love  of  nature. 
Hence  while  men  of  serious  mind,  especially  those 
whose  pursuits  have  brought  them  into  continued  rela- 
tions with  the  peopled  rather  than  the  lonely  world,  will 
always  look  to  the  Venetian  painters  as  having  touched 
those  simple  chords  of  landscape  harmony  which  are 
most  in  unison  with  earnest  and  melancholy  feeling ; 
those  whose  philosophy  is  more  cheerful  and  more  ex- 
tended, as  having  been  trained  and  colored  among  sim- 
ple and  solitary  nature,  will  seek  for  a wider  and  more 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


163 


systematic  circle  of  teaching : they  may  grant  that  the 
barred  horizontal  gloom  of  the  Titian  sky,  and  the  massy 
leaves  of  the  Titian  forest  are  among  the  most  sublime 
of  the  conceivable  forms  of  material  things ; but  they 
know  that  the  virtue  of  these  very  forms  is  to  be  learned 
only  by  right  comparison  of  them  with  the  cheerfulness, 
fulness  and  comparative  inquietness  of  other  hours  and 
scenes ; that  they  are  not  intended  for  the  continual 
food,  but  the  occasional  soothing  of  the  human  heart ; 
that  there  is  a lesson  of  not  less  value  in  its  place, 
though  of  less  concluding  and  sealing  authority,  in  every 
one  of  the  more  humble  phases  of  material  things : and 
that  there  are  some  lessons  of  equal  or  greater  authority 
which  these  masters  neither  taught  nor  received.  And 
until  the  school  of  modern  landscape  arose  Art  had 
never  noted  the  links  of  this  mighty  chain  ; it  mattered 
not  that  a fragment  lay  here  and  there,  no  heavenly 
lightning  could  descend  by  it ; the  landscape  of  the  Ve- 
netians was  without  effect  on  any  contemporary  in  sub- 
sequent schools ; it  still  remains  on  the  continent  as  use- 
less as  if  it  had  never  existed;  and  at  this  moment 
German  and  Italian  landscapes,  of  which  no  words  are 
scornful  enough  to  befit  the  utter  degradation,  hang  in 
the  Venetian  Academy  in  the  next  room  to  the  Desert  of 
Titian  and  the  Paradise  of  Tintoret.* 

That  then  which  I would  have  the  reader  inquire  re- 
specting every  work  of  art  of  undetermined  merit  sub- 
mitted to  his  judgment,  is  not  whether  it  §8  The  value  of 
be  a work  of  especial  grandeur,  impor-  arthow to bekesti- 
tance,  or  power ; but  whether  it  have  any  mated- 

* Not  the  large  Paradise,  but  the  Fall  of  Adam,  a small  picture 
chiefly  in  brown  and  gray,  near  Titian’s  Assumption.  Its  companion, 
the  Death  of  Abel,  is  remarkable  as  containing  a group  of  trees  which 
Turner,  I believe  accidentally,  has  repeated  nearly  mass  for  mass  in 
the  “Marly.”  Both  are  among  the  most  noble  works  of  this  or 
any  other  master,  whether  for  preciousuess  of  color  or  energy  of 
thought. 


164 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


virtue  or  substance  as  a link  in  this  chain  of  truth, 
whether  it  have  recorded  or  interpreted  anything  before 
unknown,  whether  it  have  added  one  single  stone  to  our 
heaven-pointing  pyramid,  cut  away  one  dark  bough,  or 
levelled  one  rugged  hillock  in  our  path.  This,  if  it  be 
an  honest  work  of  art,  it  must  have  done,  for  no  man  ever 
yet  worked  honestly  without  giving  some  such  help  to 
his  race.  God  appoints  to  every  one  of  his  creatures  a 
separate  mission,  and  if  they  discharge  it  honorably,  if 
they  quit  themselves  like  men  and  faithfully  follow  that 
light  which  is  in  them,  withdrawing  from  it  all  cold  and 
quenching  influence,  there  will  assuredly  come  of  it  such 
burning  as,  in  its  appointed  mode  and  measure,  shall 
shine  before  men,  and  be  of  service  constant  and  holy. 
Degrees  infinite  of  lustre  there  must  always  be,  but  the 
weakest  among  us  has  a gift,  however  seemingly  trivial, 
which  is  peculiar  to  him,  and  which  worthily  used  will 
be  a gift  also  to  his  race  forever — 

“ Fool  not,”  says  George  Herbert, 

For  all  may  liave. 

If  they  dare  choose,  a glorious  life  or  grave.” 

If,  on  the  contrary,  there  be  nothing  of  this  freshness 
achieved,  if  there  be  neither  purpose  nor  fidelity  in  what 
is  done,  if  it  be  an  envious  or  powerless  imitation  of 
other  men’s  labors,  if  it  be  a display  of  mere  manual  dex- 
terity or  curious  manufacture,  or  if  in  any  other  mode  it 
show  itself  as  having  its  origin  in  vanity, — Cast  it  out. 
It  matters  not  what  powers  of  mind  may  have  been  con- 
cerned or  corrupted  in  it,  all  have  lost  their  savor,  it  is 
worse  than  worthless ; — perilous — Cast  it  out. 

Works  of  art  are  indeed  always  of  mixed  kind,  their 
honesty  being  more  or  less  corrupted  by  the  various 
weaknesses  of  the  painter,  by  his  vanity,  his  idleness,  or 
his  cowardice ; (the  fear  of  doing  right  has  far  more  in. 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


165 


fluence  on  art  than  is  commonly  thought,)  that  only  is 
altogether  to  be  rejected  which  is  altogether  vain,  idle, 
and  cowardly.  Of  the  rest  the  rank  is  to  be  estimated 
rather  by  the  purity  of  their  metal  than  the  coined  value 
of  it. 

Keeping  these  principles  in  view,  let  us  endeavor  to 
obtain  something  like  a general  view  of  the  assistance 

which  has  been  rendered  to  our  study  of  _ „ . . . 

. <*-1  i § 9*  Religious 

nature  by  the  various  occurrences  of  land  landscape  of  Italy. 

. ° The  aamirable- 

scape  m elder  art,  and  by  the  more  exclu-  neg^of  its  com- 
sively  directed  labors  of  modern  schools. 

To  the  ideal  landscape  of  the  early  religious  painters 
of  Italy  I have  alluded  in  the  concluding  chapter  of  the 
second  volume.  It  is  absolutely  right  and  beautiful  in 
its  peculiar  application ; but  its  grasp  of  nature  is  nar- 
row and  its  treatment  in  most  respects  too  severe  and  con- 
ventional to  form  a profitable  example  when  the  land- 
scape is  to  be  alone  the  subject  of  thought.  The  great 
virtue  of  it  is  its  entire,  exquisite,  and  humble  realization 
of  those  objects  it  selects  ; in  this  respect  differing  from 
such  German  imitations  of  it  as  I have  met  with,  that 
there  is  no  effort  of  any  fanciful  or  ornamental  modifi- 
cations, but  loving  fidelity  to  the  thing  studied.  The 
foreground  plants  are  usually  neither  exaggerated  nor 
stiffened ; they  do  not  form  arches  or  frames  or  borders ; 
their  grace  is  unconfined,  their  simplicity  undestroyed. 
Cima  da  Conegliano,  in  his  picture  in  the  church  of  the 
Madonna  del!  Orto  at  Venice,  has  given  us  the  oak,  the 
fig,  the  beautiful  “Erba  della  Madonna”  on  the  wall, 
precisely  such  a bunch  of  it  as  may  be  seen  growing  at 
this  day  on  the  marble  steps  of  that  very  church ; ivy 
and  other  creepers,  and  a strawberry  plant  in  the  fore- 
ground, with  a blossom  and  a berry  just  set,  and  one  half 
ripe  and  one  ripe,  all  patiently  and  innocently  painted 
from  the  real  thing,  and  therefore  most  divine.  Fra 
Angelico’s  use  of  the  oxalis  acetosella  is  as  faithful  in 


166 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


representation  as  touching-  in  feeling.*  The  ferns  that 
grow  on  the  walls  of  Fiesole  may  be  seen  in  their  simple 
verity  on  the  architecture  of  Ghirlandajo.  The  rose, 
the  myrtle,  and  the  lily,  the  olive  and  orange,  pome- 
granate and  vine,  have  received  their  fairest  portraiture 
where  they  bear  a sacred  character ; even  the  common 
plantains  and  mallows  of  the  waysides  are  touched  with 
deep  reverence  by  Raffaelle ; and  indeed  for  the  perfect 
treatment  of  details  of  this  kind,  treatment  as  delicate 
and  affectionate  as  it  is  elevated  and  manly,  it  is  to  the 
works  of  these  schools  alone  that  we  can  refer.  And  on 
this  their  peculiar  excellence  I should  the  more  earnestly 
insist,  because  it  is  of  a kind  altogether  neglected  by  the 
English  school,  and  with  most  unfortunate  result,  many 
of  our  best  painters  missing  their  deserved  rank  solely 
from  the  want  of  it,  as  Gainsborough;  and  all  being 
more  or  less  checked  in  their  progress  or  vulgarized  in 
their  aim. 

It  is  a misfortune  for  all  honest  critics,  that  hardly  any 
quality  of  art  is  independently  to  be  praised,  and  with- 
§ 10.  Finish,  and  ou^  reference  to  the  motive  from  which  it 
how  wSht°  a id  resulted,  and  the  place  in  which  it  appears ; 
how  wrong.  so  no  principle  can  be  simply  enforced 
but  it  shall  seem  to  countenance  a vice ; while  the  work 
of  qualification  and  explanation  both  weakens  the  force 
of  what  is  said,  and  is  not  perhaps  always  likely  to  be 
with  patience  received : so  also  those  who  desire  to  mis- 
understand or  to  oppose  have  it  always  in  their  power 
to  become  obtuse  listeners  or  specious  opponents.  Thus 
I hardly  dare  insist  upon  the  virtue  of  completion,  lest 
I should  be  supposed  a defender  of  Wouvermans  or 
Gerard  Dow ; neither  can  I adequately  praise  the  power 

* The  triple  leaf  of  this  plant,  and  white  flower,  stained  purple, 
probably  gave  it  strange  typical  interest  among  the  Christian  painters. 
Angelico,  in  using  its  leaves  mixed  with  daisies  in  the  foreground  of 
his  Crucifixion  had,  I imagine,  a view  also  to  its  chemical  property. 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


167 


of  Tintoret,  without  fearing  to  be  thought  adverse  to 
Holbein  or  Perugino.  The  fact  is,  that  both  finish  and 
impetuosity,  specific  minuteness,  or  large  abstraction, 
may  be  the  signs  of  passion,  or  of  its  reverse ; may  re- 
sult from  affection  or  indifference,  intellect  or  dulness. 
Some  men  finish  from  intense  love  of  the  beautiful  in  the 
smallest  parts  of  what  they  do ; others  in  pure  incapa- 
bility of  comprehending  anything  but  parts ; others  to 
show  their  dexterity  with  the  brush,  and  prove  expen- 
diture of  time.  Some  are  impetuous  and  bold  in  their 
handling,  from  having  great  thoughts  to  express  which 
are  independent  of  detail ; others  because  they  have  bad 
taste  or  have  been  badly  taught ; others  from  vanity,  and 
others  from  indolence.  (Compare  Yol.  II.  Chap.  IX.  § 8.) 
Now  both  the  finish  and  incompletion  are  right  where 
they  are  the  signs  of  passion  or  of  thought,  and  both  are 
wrong,  and  I think  the  finish  the  more  contemptible  of 
the  two,  when  they  cease  to  be  so.  The  modern  Italians 
will  paint  every  leaf  of  a laurel  or  rose-bush  without 
the  slightest  feeling  of  their  beauty  or  character ; and 
without  showing  one  spark  of  intellect  or  affection  from 
beginning  to  end.  Anything  is  better  than  this  ; and 
yet  the  very  highest  schools  do  the  same  thing,  or  nearly 
so,  but  with  totally  different  motives  and  perceptions, 
and  the  result  is  divine.  On  the  whole,  I conceive  that 
the  extremes  of  good  and  evil  lie  with  the  finishers,  and 
that  whatever  glorious  power  we  may  admit  in  men 
like  Tintoret,  whatever  attractiveness  of  method  to 
Bubens,  Eembrandt,  or,  though  in  far  less  degree,  our 
own  Beynolds,  still  the  thoroughly  great  men  are  those 
who  have  done  everything  thoroughly,  and  who,  in  a 
word,  have  never  despised  anything,  however  small, 
of  God’s  making.  And  this  is  the  chief  fault  of  our 
English  landscapists,  that  they  have  not  the  intense 
all-observing  penetration  of  well-balanced  mind ; they 
have  not,  except  in  one  or  two  instances,  anything  of 


168 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


that  feeling  which  Wordsworth  shows  in  the  follow- 
ing lines : — 

“ So  fair,  so  sweet,  withal  so  sensitive  ; — 

Would  that  the  little  flowers  were  born  to  live 
Conscious  of  half  the  pleasure  which  they  give. 

That  to  this  mountain  daisy’s  self  were  known 
The  beauty  of  its  star-shaped  shadow,  thrown 
On  the  smooth  surface  of  this  naked  stone T 

That  is  a little  bit  of  good,  downright,  foreground 
painting — no  mistake  about  it ; daisy,  and  shadow,  and 
stone  texture  and  all.  Our  painters  must  come  to  this 
before  they  have  done  their  duty ; and  yet,  on  the  other 
hand,  let  them  beware  of  finishing,  for  the  sake  of  finish, 
all  over  their  picture.  The  ground  is  not  to  be  all  over 
daisies,  nor  is  every  daisy  to  have  its  star-shaped  shad- 
ow ; there  is  as  much  finish  in  the  right  concealment  of 
things  as  in  the  right  exhibition  of  them ; and  while  I 
demand  this  amount  of  specific  character  where  nature 
shows  it,  I demand  equal  fidelity  to  her  where  she  con- 
ceals it.  To  paint  mist  rightly,  space  rightly,  and  light 
rightly,  it  may  be  often  necessary  to  paint  nothing  else 
rightly,  but  the  rule  is  simple  for  all  that ; if  the  artist 
is  painting  something  that  he  knows  and  loves,  as  he 
knows  it  because  he  loves  it,  whether  it  be  the  fair 
strawberry  of  Cima,  or  the  clear  sky  of  Francia,  or  the 
blazing  incomprehensible  mist  of  Turner,  he  is  all  right ; 
but  the  moment  he  does  anything  as  he  thinks  it  ought 
to  be,  because  he  does  not  care  about  it,  he  is  all  wrong. 
He  has  only  to  ask  himself  whether  he  cares  for  anything 
except  himself ; so  far  as  he  does  he  will  make  a good 
picture ; so  far  as  he  thinks  of  himself  a vile  one.  This 
is  the  root  of  the  viciousness  of  the  whole  French  school. 
Industry  they  have,  learning  they  have,  power  they  have, 
feeling  they  have,  yet  not  so  much  feeling  as  ever  to 
force  them  to  forget  themselves  even  for  a moment ; the 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


169 


§ 11.  The  open 
skies  of  the  relig- 
ious schools,  how 
valuable.  Moun- 
tain drawing  of 
Masaccio.  Land- 
scape of  the  Bel- 
linis and  Giorgi- 
one. 


ruling  motive  is  invariably  vanity,  and  the  picture  there- 
fore an  abortion. 

Keturning  to  the  pictures  of  the  religious  schools,  we 
find  that  their  open  skies  are  also  of  the  highest  valua 
Their  preciousness  is  such  that  no  subse- 
quent schools  can  by  comparison  be  said 
to  have  painted  sky  at  all,  but  only  clouds, 
or  mist,  or  blue  canopies.  The  golden  sky 
of  Marco  Basaiti  in  the  Academy  of  Yenice 
altogether  overpowers  and  renders  value- 
less that  of  Titian  beside  it.  Those  of  Francia  in  the 
gallery  of  Bologna  are  even  more  wonderful,  because 
cooler  in  tone  and  behind  figures  in  full  light.  The 
touches  of  white  light  in  the  horizon  of  Angelico’s  Last 
Judgment  are  felt  and  wrought  with  equal  truth.  The 
dignified  and  simple  forms  of  cloud  in  repose  are  often 
by  these  painters  sublimely  expressed,  but  of  change- 
ful cloud  form  they  show  no  examples.  The  architec- 
ture, mountains,  and  water  of  these  distances  are  com- 
monly conventional ; motives  are  to  be  found  in  them  of 
the  highest  beauty,  and  especially  remarkable  for  quan- 
tity and  meaning  of  incident ; but  they  can  only  be 
studied  or  accepted  in  the  particular  feeling  that  pro- 
duced them.  It  may  generally  be  observed  that  what- 
ever has  been  the  result  of  strong  emotion  is  ill  seen 
unless  through  the  medium  of  such  emotion,  and  will 
lead  to  conclusions  utterly  false  and  perilous,  if  it  be 
made  a subject  of  cold-hearted  observance,  or  an  object 
of  systematic  imitation.  One  piece  of  genuine  mountain 
drawing,  however,  occurs  in  the  landscape  of  Masaccio’s 
Tribute  Money.  It  is  impossible  to  say  what  strange 
results  might  have  taken  place  in  this  particular  field  of 
art,  or  how  suddenly  a great  school  of  landscape  might 
have  arisen,  had  the  life  of  this  great  painter  been  pro- 
longed. Of  this  particular  fresco  I shall  have  much  to 
say  hereafter.  The  two  brothers  Bellini  gave  a marked 


170 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


and  vigorous  impulse  to  the  landscape  of  Venice,  of 
Gentile’s  architecture  I shall  speak  presently.  Gio- 
vanni’s, though  in  style  less  interesting  and  in  place  less 
prominent,  occurring  chiefly  as  a kind  of  frame  to  his 
pictures,  connecting  them  with  the  architecture  of  the 
churches  for  wdiich  they  were  intended,  is  in  refinement 
of  realization,  I suppose,  quite  unrivalled,  especially  in 
passages  requiring  pure  gradation,  as  the  hollows  of 
vaultings.  That  of  Veronese  would  look  ghostly  beside 
it ; that  of  Titian  lightless.  His  landscape  is  occasion- 
ally quaint  and  strange  like  Giorgione’s,  and  as  fine  in 
color,  as  that  behind  the  Madonna  in  the  Brera  gallery 
at  Milan ; but  a more  truthful  fragment  occurs  in  the 
picture  in  San  Francesco  della  Vigna  at  Venice  ; and  in 
the  picture  of  St.  Jerome  in  the  church  of  San  Crisosto- 
mo,  the  landscape  is  as  perfect  and  beautiful  as  any  back- 
ground may  legitimately  be,  and  finer,  as  far  as  it  goes, 
than  anything  of  Titian’s.  It  is  remarkable  for  the  abso- 
lute truth  of  its  sky,  whose  blue,  clear  as  crystal,  and 
though  deep  in  tone  bright  as  the  open  air,  is  gradated 
to  the  horizon  with  a cautiousness  and  finish  almost  in- 
conceivable ; and  to  obtain  light  at  the  horizon  without 
contradicting  the  system  of  chiaroscuro  adopted  in  the 
figures  which  are  lighted  from  the  right  hand,  it  is 
barred  across  with  some  glowing  white  cirri,  which,  in 
their  turn,  are  opposed  by  a single  dark  horizontal  line  of 
lower  cloud ; and  to  throw  the  whole  farther  back,  there 
is  a wreath  of  rain  cloud  of  warmer  color  floating  above 
the  mountains,  lighted  on  its  under  edge,  whose  faith- 
fulness to  nature,  both  in  hue  and  in  its  light  and 
shattering  form,  is  altogether  exemplary ; the  wandering 
of  the  light  among  the  hills  is  equally  studied,  and  the 
whole  is  crowned  by  the  grand  realization  of  the  leaves 
of  the  fig-tree  alluded  to  (Vol.  II.  Part  hi.  Chap.  5),  as 
well  as  of  the  herbage  upon  the  rocks.  Considering  that 
with  all  this  care  and  completeness  in  the  background, 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


171 


there  is  nothing  that  is  not  of  meaning  and  necessity  in 
reference  to  the  figures,  and  that  in  the  figures  them- 
selves the  dignity  and  heavenliness  of  the  highest  relig- 
ious painters  are  combined  with  a force  and  purity  of 
color,  greater  I think  than  Titian’s,  it  is  a work  which 
may  be  set  before  the  young  artist  as  in  every  respect  a 
nearly  faultless  guide.  Giorgione’s  landscape  is  inven- 
tive and  solemn,  but  owing  to  the  rarity  even  of  his  nom- 
inal works  I dare  not  speak  of  it  in  general  terms.  It  is 
certainly  conventional,  and  is  rather,  I imagine,  to  be 
studied  for  its  color  and  its  motives  than  its  details. 

Of  Titian  and  Tintoret  I have  spoken  already.  The 
latter  is  in  every  way  the  greater  master,  never  indulging 
in  the  exaggerated  color  of  Titian,  and  at- 

, . . , , i -i  * -i  , -I  • §12.  Landscape  of 

taming  lar  more  perfect  light ; his  grasp  Titian  and  Tmto- 
of  nature  is  more  extensive,  and  his  view 
of  her  more  imaginative,  (incidental  notices  of  his  land- 
scape will  be  found  in  the  chapter  on  Imagination  pen- 
etrative, of  the  second  volume,)  but  he  is  usually  too 
impatient  to  carry  liis  thoughts  as  far  out,  or  to  realize 
with  as  much  substantiality  as  Titian.  In  the  St.  Jerome 
of  the  latter,  in  the  gallery  of  the  Brera,  there  is  a su- 
perb example  of  the  modes  in  which  the  objects  of  land- 
scape may  be  either  suggested  or  elaborated  according 
to  their  place  and  claim.  The  larger  features  of  the 
ground,  foliage,  and  drapery,  as  well  as  the  lion  in  the 
lower  angle,  are  executed  with  a slightness  which  admits 
not  of  close  examination,  and  which,  if  not  in  shade,  would 
be  offensive  to  the  generality  of  observers.  But  on  the 
rock  above  the  lion,  where  it  turns  towards  the  light,  and 
where  the  eye  is  intended  to  dwell,  there  is  a wreath  of 
ivy  of  which  every  leaf  is  separately  drawn  with  the  great- 
est accuracy  and  care,  and  beside  it  a lizard,  studied  with 
equal  earnestness,  yet  always  with  that  right  grandeur 
of  manner  to  which  I have  alluded  in  the  preface.  Tin- 
toret seldom  reaches  or  attempts  the  elaboration  in  sub- 


172 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


stance  and  color  of  these  objects,  bnt  he  is  even  more 
truth -telling  and  certain  in  his  rendering  of  all  the  great 
characters  of  specific  form,  and  as  the  painter  of  Space 
he  stands  altogether  alone  among  dead  masters ; being 
the  first  who  introduced  the  slightness  and  confusion  of 
touch  which  are  expressive  of  the  effects  of  luminous 
objects  seen  through  large  spaces  of  air,  and  the  princi- 
ples of  aerial  color  which  have  been  since  carried  out  in 
other  fields  by  Turner.  I conceive  him  to  be  the  most 
powerful  painter  whom  the  world  has  seen,  and  that  he 
was  prevented  from  being  also  the  most  perfect,  partly 
by  untoward  circumstances  in  his  position  and  education, 
partly  by  the  very  fulness  and  impetuosity  of  his  own  mind, 
partly  by  the  want  of  religious  feeling  and  its  accompa- 
nying perception  of  beauty for  his  noble  treatment  of 
religious  subjects,  of  which  I have  given  several  exam- 
ples in  the  third  part,  appears  to  be  the  result  only  of 
that  grasp  which  a great  and  well-toned  intellect  neces- 
sarily takes  of  any  subject  submitted  to  it,  and  is  want- 
ing in  the  signs  of  the  more  withdrawn  and  sacred  sym- 
pathies. 

But  whatever  advances  were  made  by  Tintoret  in 
modes  of  artistical  treatment,  he  cannot  be  considered 
as  having  enlarged  the  sphere  of  landscape  conception. 
He  took  no  cognizance  even  of  the  materials  and  mo- 
tives, so  singularly  rich  in  color,  which  were  forever 
around  him  in  his  own  Yenice.  All  portions  of  Vene- 
tian scenery  introduced  by  him  are  treated  conventional- 
ly and  carelessly  ; the  architectural  characters  lost  alto- 
gether, the  sea  distinguished  from  the  sky  only  by  a 
darker  green,  while  of  the  sky  itself  only  those  forms 
were  employed  by  him  which  had  been  repeated  again 
and  again  for  centuries,  though  in  less  tangibility  and 
completion.  Of  mountain  scenery  he  has  left,  I believe, 
no  example  so  far  carried  as  that  of  J ohn  Bellini  above 
instanced. 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES . 


173 


The  Florentine  and  Ambrian  schools  supply  us  with 
no  examples  of  landscape,  except  that  introduced  by 
their  earliest  masters,  gradually  over-  gi3  gch00ls  of 
whelmed  under  renaissance  architecture.  andrBSogn|Iilan’ 

Leonardo’s  landscape  has  been  of  un- 
fortunate effect  on  art,  so  far  as  it  has  had  effect  at  all. 
In  realization  of  detail  he  verges  on  the  ornamental,  in 
his  rock  outlines  he  has  all  the  deficiencies  and  little  of 
the  feeling  of  the  earlier  men.  Behind  the  “ Sacrifice  for 
the  Friends  ” of  Giotto  at  Pisa,  there  is  a sweet  piece 
of  rock  incident,  a little  fountain  breaking'  out  at  the 
mountain  foot,  and  trickling  away,  its  course  marked  by 
branches  of  reeds,  the  latter  formal  enough  certainly, 
and  always  in  triplets,  but  still  with  a sense  of  nature 
pervading  the  whole  which  is  utterly  wanting  to  the 
rocks  of  Leonardo  in  the  Holy  Family  in  the  Louvre. 
The  latter  are  grotesque  without  being  ideal,  and  extra- 
ordinary without  being  impressive.  The  sketch  in  the 
Uffizii  of  Florence  has  some  fine  foliage,  and  there  is  of 
course  a certain  virtue  in  all  the  work  of  a man  like  Leo- 
nardo which  I would  not  depreciate,  but  our  admiration 
of  it  in  this  particular  field  must  be  qualified,  and  our 
following  cautious. 

No  advances  were  made  in  landscape,  so  far  as  I know, 
after  the  time  of  Tintoret ; the  power  of  art  ebbed  gradu- 
ally away  from  the  derivative  schools ; various  degrees  of 
cleverness  or  feeling  being  manifested  in  more  or  less  bril- 
liant conventionalism.  I once  supposed  there,  was  some 
life  in  the  landscape  of  Bomenichino,  but  in  this  I must 
have  been  wrong.  The  man  who  painted  the  Madonna 
del  Bosario  and  Martyrdom  of  St.  Agnes  in  the  gallery  of 
Bologna,  is  palpably  incapable  of  doing  anything  good, 
great,  or  right  in  any  field,  way,  or  kind,  whatsoever.* 

* This  is  no  rash  method  of  judgment,  sweeping  and  hasty  as  it  may 
appear.  From  the  weaknesses  of  an  artist,  or  failures,  however  nu- 
merous, we  have  no  right  to  conjecture  his  total  inability  ; a time  may 


174 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


Though,  however,  at  this  period  the  general  grasp  of 
the  schools  was  perpetually  contracting,  a gift  was  given 
, , „ , to  the  world  by  Claude,  for  which  we  are 
vator,  and  the  perhaps  hardly  enough  grateful,  owing  to 

Poussins.  f * J % - , 

the  very  frequency  of  our  after  enjoyment 
of  it.  He  set  the  sun  in  heaven,  and  was,  I suppose,  the 
first  who  attempted  anything  like  the  realization  of  actual 
sunshine  in  misty  air.  He  gives  the  first  example  of  the 
study  of  nature  for  her  own  sake,  and  allowing  for  the 
unfortunate  circumstances  of  his  education,  and  for  his 
evident  inferiority  of  intellect,  more  could  hardly  have 
been  expected  from  him.  His  false  taste,  forced  compo- 
sition, and  ignorant  rendering  of  detail  have  perhaps 
been  of  more  detriment  to  art  than  the  gift  he  gave  was 
of  advantage.  The  character  of  his  own  mind  is  sin- 
gular ; I know  of  no  other  instance  of  a man’s  working 
from  nature  continually  with  the  desire  of  being  true, 
and  never  attaining  the  power  of  drawing  so  much  as  a 


come  when  he  may  rise  into  sudden  strength,  or  an  instance  occur 
when  his  efforts  shall  be  successful.  But  there  are  some  pictures 
which  rank  not  under  the  head  of  failures,  but  of  perpetrations  or 
commissions  ; some  things  which  a man  cannot  do  nor  say  without 
sealing  forever  his  character  and  capacity.  The  angel  holding  the 
cross  with  his  finger  in  his  eye,  the  roaring  red-faced  children  about 
the  crown  of  thorns,  the  blasphemous  (I  speak  deliberately  and  de- 
terminedly) head  of  Christ  upon  the  handkerchief,  and  the  mode  in 
which  the  martyrdom  of  the  saint  is  exhibited  (I  do  not  choose  to  use 
the  expressions  which  alone  could  characterize  it)  are  perfect,  suffi- 
cient, incontrovertible  proofs  that  whatever  appears  good  in  any  of  the 
doings  of  such  a painter  must  be  deceptive,  and  that  we  may  be  as- 
sured that  our  taste  is  corrupted  and  false  whenever  we  feel  disposed 
to  admire  him.  I am  prepared  to  support  this  position,  however  un- 
charitable it  may  seem  ; a man  may  be  tempted  into  a gross  sin  by 
passion,  and  forgiven  ; and  yet  there  are  some  kinds  of  sins  into  which 
only  men  of  a certain  kind  can  be  tempted,  and  which  cannot  be  for- 
given. It  should  be  added,  however,  that  the  artistical  qualities  of 
these  pictures  are  in  every  way  worthy  of  the  conceptions  they  real- 
ize ; I do  not  recollect  any  instances  of  color  or  execution  so  coarse 
and  feelingless. 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


175 


bough  of  a tree  rightly.  Salvator,  a man  originally  en- 
dowed with  far  higher  power  of  mind  than  Claude,  was 
altogether  unfaithful  to  his  mission,  and  has  left  us,  I 
believe,  no  gift.  Everything  that  he  did  is  evidently  for 
the  sake  of  exhibiting  his  own  dexterity ; there  is  no 
love  of  any  kind  for  anything ; his  choice  of  landscape 
features  is  dictated  by  no  delight  in  the  sublime,  but  by 
mere  animal  restlessness  or  ferocity,  guided  by  an  imag- 
inative power  of  which  he  could  not  altogether  deprive 
himself.  He  has  done  nothing  which  others  have  not 
done  better,  or  which  it  would  not  have  been  better  not 
to  have  done ; in  nature,  he  mistakes  distortion  for  en- 
ergy, and  savageness  for  sublimity ; in  man,  mendicity 
for  sanctity,  and  conspiracy  for  heroism. 

The  landscape  of  Nicolo  Poussin  shows  much  power, 
and  is  usually  composed  and  elaborated  on  right  princi- 
ples, (compare  preface  to  second  edition,)  but  I am  aware 
of  nothing  that  it  has  attained  of  new  or  peculiar  excel- 
lence ; it  is  a graceful  mixture  of  qualities  to  be  found 
in  other  masters  in  higher  degrees.  In  finish  it  is  infe- 
rior to  Leonardo’s,  in  invention  to  Giorgione’s,  in  truth 
to  Titian’s,  in  grace  to  Raffaelle’s.  The  landscapes  of 
Gaspar  have  serious  feeling  and  often  valuable  and  sol- 
emn color ; virtueless  otherwise,  they  are  full  of  the 
most  degraded  mannerism,  and  I believe  the  admiration 
of  them  to  have  been  productive  of  extensive  evil  among 
recent  schools. 

The  development  of  landscape  north  of  the  Alps,  pre- 
sents us  with  the  same  general  phases  under  modifica- 
tions dependent  partly  on  less  intensity  of 

1 ..  t.  : . , , §15.  German  and 

feeling,  partly  on  diminished  availableness  Flemish  land- 
of  landscape  material.  That  of  the  relig- 
ious painters  is  treated  with  the  same  affectionate  com- 
pletion ; but  exuberance  of  fancy  sometimes  diminishes 
the  influence  of  the  imagination,  and  the  absence  of  the 
Italian  force  of  passion  admits  of  more  patient  and  some- 


176 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


what  less  intellectual  elaboration.  A morbid  habit  of 
mind  is  evident  in  many,  seeming  to  lose  sight  of  the 
balance  and  relations  of  things,  so  as  to  become  intense 
in  trifles,  gloomily  minute,  as  in  Albert  Durer ; and  this 
mingled  with  a feverish  operation  of  the  fancy,  which 
appears  to  result  from  certain  habitual  conditions  of 
bodily  health  rather  than  of  mental  culture,  (and  of  which 
the  sickness  without  the  power  is  eminently  characteris- 
tic of  the  modern  Germans ;)  but  with  all  this  there  are 
virtues  of  the  very  highest  order  in  those  schools,  and  I 
regret  that  my  knowledge  is  insufficient  to  admit  of  my 
giving  any  detailed  account  of  them. 

In  the  landscape  of  Rembrandt  and  Rubens,  we  have 
the  northern  parallel  to  the  power  of  the  Venetians. 
Among  the  etchings  and  drawings  of  Rembrandt,  land- 
scape thoughts  may  be  found  not  unworthy  of  Titian, 
and  studies  from  nature  of  sublime  fidelity  ; but  his  sys- 
tem of  chiaroscuro  was  inconsistent  with  the  gladness, 
and  his  peculiar  modes  of  feeling  with  the  grace,  of  nat- 
ure ; nor  from  my  present  knowledge  can  I name  any 
work  on  canvas  in  which  he  has  carried  out  the  dignity 
of  his  etched  conceptions,  or  exhibited  any  perceptive- 
ness of  new  truths. 

Not  so  Rubens,  who  perhaps  furnishes  us  with  the  first 
instances  of  complete  unconventional  unaffected  land- 
scape. His  treatment  is  healthy,  manly,  and  rational,  not 
very  affectionate,  yet  often  condescending  to  minute  and 
multitudinous  detail ; always  as  far  as  it  goes  pure,  for- 
cible, and  refreshing,  consummate  in  composition,  and 
marvellous  in  color.  In  the  Pitti  palace,  the  best  of  its 
two  Rubens  landscapes  has  been  placed  near  a character- 
istic and  highly -finished  Titian,  the  marriage  of  St.  Cath- 
erine. But  for  the  grandeur  of  line  and  solemn  feeling  in 
the  flock  of  sheep,  and  the  figures  of  the  latter  work,  I 
doubt  if  all  its  glow  and  depth  of  tone  could  support  its 
over  charged  green  and  blue  against  the  open  breezy 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


177 


sunshine  of  the  Fleming.  I do  not  mean  to  rank  the  art 
of  Rubens  with  that  of  Titian,  but  it  is  always  to  be  re- 
membered that  Titian  hardly  ever  paints  sunshine,  but 
a certain  opalescent  twilight  which  has  as  much  of 
human  emotion  as  of  imitative  truth  in  it, — 

“ The  clouds  that  gather  round  the  setting  sun 
Do  take  a sober  coloring  from  an  eye 
That  hath  kept  watch  o’er  man’s  mortality  : ” 

and  that  art  of  this  kind  must  always  be  liable  to  some 
appearance  of  failure  when  compared  with  a less  pa- 
thetic statement  of  facts. 

It  is  to  be  noted,  however,  that  the  licenses  taken  by 
Rubens  in  particular  instances  are  as  bold  as  his  general 
statements  are  sincere.  In  the  landscape  just  instanced 
the  horizon  is  an  oblique  line ; in  the  Sunset  of  our  own 
gallery  many  of  the  shadows  fall  at  right  angles  to  the 
light ; and  in  a picture  in  the  Dulwich  gallery  a rainbow 
is  seen  by  the  spectator  at  the  side  of  the  sun. 

These  bold  and  frank  licenses  are  not  to  be  considered 
as  detracting  from  the  rank  of  the  painter ; they  are  usu- 
ally characteristic  of  those  minds  whose  grasp  of  nature 
is  so  certain  and  extensive  as  to  enable  them  fearlessly 
to  sacrifice  a truth  of  actuality  to  a truth  of  feeling. 
Yet  the  young  artist  must  keep  in  mind  that  the  paint- 
er’s greatness  consists  not  in  his  taking,  but  in  his  aton- 
ing for  them. 

Among  the  professed  landscapists  of  the  Dutch 
school,  we  find  much  dexterous  imitation  of  certain 
kinds  of  nature,  remarkable  usually  for  its  § 16>  The  iower 
persevering  rejection  of  whatever  is  great,  Dutch  schools- 
valuable,  or  affecting  in  the  object  studied.  Where, 
however,  they  show  real  desire  to  paint  what  they  saw 
as  far  as  they  saw  it,  there  is  of  course  much  in  them 
that  is  instructive,  as  in  Cuyp  and  in  the  etchings  of 
Waterloo,  which  have  even  very  sweet  and  genuine  feel- 
12 


178 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


ing*,  and  so  in  some  of  their  architectural  painters. 
But  the  object  of  the  great  body  of  them  is  merely  to 
display  manual  dexterities  of  one  kind  or  another,  and 
their  effect  on  the  public  mind  is  so  totally  for  evil,  that 
though  I do  not  deny  the  advantage  an  artist  of  real 
judgment  may  derive  from  the  study  of  some  of  them,  I 
conceive  the  best  patronage  that  any  monarch  could 
possibly  bestow  upon  the  arts,  would  be  to  collect  the 
whole  body  of  them  into  a grand  gallery  and  bum  it  to 
the  ground. 

Passing  to  the  English  school,  we  find  a connecting 
link  between  them  and  the  Italians  formed  by  Bichard 
§ it  English  Wilson.  Had  this  artist  studied  under 
school,  Wilson  and  favorable  circumstances,  there  is  evidence 

Gainsborough.  . . n 

oi  his  having  possessed  power  enough  to 
produce  an  original  picture ; but,  corrupted  by  study  of 
the  Poussins,  and  gathering  his  materials  chiefly  in 
their  field,  the  district  about  Borne — a district  especially 
unfavorable,  as  exhibiting  no  pure  or  healthy  nature, 
but  a diseased  and  overgrown  Flora  among  half-devel- 
oped volcanic  rocks,  loose  calcareous  concretions,  and 
mouldering  wrecks  of  buildings — and  whose  spirit,  I 
conceive,  to  be  especially  opposed  to  the  natural  tone  of 
the  English  mind,  his  originality  was  altogether  over- 
powered, and,  though  he  paints  in  a manly  way  and 
occasionally  reaches  exquisite  tones  of  color,  as  in  the 
small  and  very  precious  picture  belonging  to  Mr.  Bo- 
gers,  and  sometimes  manifests  some  freshness  of  feeling, 
as  in  the  Villa  of  Maecenas  of  our  National  Gallery,  yet 
his  pictures  are  in  general  mere  diluted  adaptations 
from  Poussin  and  Salvator,  without  the  dignity  of  the 
one  or  the  fire  of  the  other. 

Not  so  Gainsborough — a great  name  his,  whether  of 
the  English  or  any  other  school.  The  greatest  colorist 
since  Bubens,  and  the  last,  I think,  of  legitimate  color- 
ists ; that  is  to  say,  of  those  who  were  fully  acquainted 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES . 


179 


with  the  power  of  their  material ; pure  in  his  English 
feeling,  profound  in  his  seriousness,  graceful  in  his  gay- 
ety,  there  are  nevertheless  certain  deductions  to  be 
made  from  his  worthiness  which  yet  I dread  to  make, 
because  my  knowledge  of  his  landscape  works  is  not 
extensive  enough  to  justify  me  in  speaking  of  them  de- 
cisively ; but  this  is  to  be  noted  of  all  that  I know,  that 
they  are  rather  motives  of  feeling  and  color  than  earnest 
studies;  that  their  execution  is  in  some  degree  man- 
nered, and  always  hasty  ; that  they  are  altogether  want- 
ing in  the  affectionate  detail  of  which  I have  already 
spoken ; and  that  their  color  is  in  some  measure  depend- 
ent on  a bituminous  brown  and  conventional  green 
which  have  more  of  science  than  of  truth  in  them. 
These  faults  may  be  sufficiently  noted  in  the  magnificent 
picture  presented  by  him  to  the  Royal  Academy,  and 
tested  by  a comparison  of  it  with  the  Turner  (Llanberis,) 
in  the  same  room.  Nothing  can  be  more  attractively 
luminous  or  aerial  than  the  distance  of  the  Gainsbor- 
ough, nothing  more  bold  or  inventive  than  the  forms  of 
its  crags  and  the  diffusion  of  the  broad  distant  light 
upon  them,  where  a vulgar  artist  would  have  thrown 
them  into  dark  contrast.  But  it  will  be  found  that  the 
light  of  the  distance  is  brought  out  by  a violent  exag- 
geration of  the  gloom  in  the  valley ; that  the  forms  of 
the  green  trees  which  bear  the  chief  light  are  careless 
and  ineffective ; that  the  markings  of  the  crags  are 
equally  hasty;  and  that  no  object  in  the  foreground  has 
realization  enough  to  enable  the  eye  to  rest  upon  it. 
The  Turner,  a much  feebler  picture  in  its  first  impres- 
sion, and  altogether  inferior  in  the  quality  and  value  of 
its  individual  hues,  will  yet  be  found  in  the  end  more 
forcible,  because  unexaggerated ; its  gloom  is  moderate 
and  aerial,  its  light  deep  in  tone,  its  color  entirely  un- 
conventional, and  the  forms  of  its  rocks  studied  with 
the  most  devoted  care.  With  Gainsborough  terminates 


180 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


the  series  of  painters  connected  with  the  elder  schools. 
By  whom,  among  those  yet  living  or  lately  lost,  the  im- 
pulse was  first  given  to  modern  landscape,  I attempt  not 
to  decide.  Such  questions  are  rather  invidious  than 
interesting;  the  particular  tone  or  direction  of  any 
school  seems  to  me  always  to  have  resulted  rather  from 
certain  phases  of  national  character,  limited  to  particu- 
lar periods,  than  from  individual  teaching ; and,  espe- 
cially among  moderns,  what  has  been  good  in  each  mas- 
ter has  been  commonly  original. 

I have  already  alluded  to  the  simplicity  and  earnest- 
ness of  the  mind  of  Constable ; to  its  vigorous  rupture 
§ is.  constable,  with  school  laws,  and  to  its  unfortunate 
Caicott.  error  on  the  opposite  side.  Unteachable- 

ness seems  to  have  been  a main  feature  of  his  character, 
and  there  is  corresponding  want  of  veneration  in  the 
way  he  approaches  nature  herself.  His  early  education 
and  associations  were  also  against  him ; they  induced  in 
him  a morbid  preference  of  subjects  of  a low  order.  I 
have  never  seen  any  work  of  his  in  which  there  were  any 
signs  of  his  being  able  to  draw,  and  hence  even  the  most 
necessary  details  are  painted  by  him  inefficiently.  His 
works  are  also  eminently  wanting  both  in  rest  and  re- 
finement, and  Fuseli’s  jesting  compliment  is  too  true ; 
for  the  showery  weather  in  which  the  artist  delights, 
misses  alike  the  majesty  of  storm  and  the  loveliness  of 
calm  weather:  it  is  great-coat  weather,  and  nothing 
more.  There  is  strange  want  of  depth  in  the  mind 
which  has  no  pleasure  in  sunbeams  but  when  piercing 
painfully  through  clouds,  nor  in  foliage  but  when  shaken 
by  the  wind,  nor  in  light  itself  but  when  dickering,  glis- 
tening, restless,  and  feeble.  Yet,  with  all  these  deduc- 
tions, his  works  are  to  be  deeply  respected  as  thoroughly 
original,  thoroughly  honest,  free  from  affectation,  manly 
in  manner,  frequently  successful  in  cool  color,  and  es- 
pecially realizing  certain  motives  of  English  scenery 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


181 


with  perhaps  as  much  affection  as  such  scenery,  unless 
when  regarded  through  media  of  feeling  derived  from 
higher  sources,  is  calculated  to  inspire. 

On  the  works  of  Calcott,  high  as  his  reputation  stands, 
I should  look  with  far  less  respect ; I see  not  any  pref- 
erence or  affection  in  the  artist;  there  is  no  tendency 
in  him  with  which  we  can  sympathize,  nor  does  there 
appear  any  sign  of  aspiration,  effort,  or  enjoyment  in 
any  one  of  his  works.  He  appears  to  have  completed 
them  methodically,  to  have  been  content  with  them 
when  completed,  to  have  thought  them  good,  legitimate, 
regular  pictures ; perhaps  in  some  respects  better  than 
nature.  He  painted  everything  tolerably,  and  nothing 
excellently ; he  has  given  us  no  gift,  struck  for  us  no 
light,  and  though  he  has  produced  one  or  two  valuable 
works,  of  which  the  finest  I know  is  the  Marine  in  the 
possession  of  Sir  J.  Swinburne,  they  will,  I believe,  in 
future  have  no  place  among  those  considered  represent- 
ative of  the  English  school. 

Throughout  the  range  of  elder  art  it  will  be  remem- 
bered we  have  found  no  instance  of  the  faithful  paint- 
ing of  mountain  scenery,  except  in  a faded 
background  of  Masaccio’s:  nothing  more  tendency  of  re- 

,,  . IT,-  , cent  landscape. 

than  rocky  eminences,  undulating  hills,  or 
fantastic  crags,  and  even  these  treated  altogether  under 
typical  forms.  The  more  specific  study  of  mountains 
seems  to  have  coincided  with  the  most  dexterous  prac- 
tice of  water-color ; but  it  admits  of  doubt  whether  the 
choice  of  subject  has  been  directed  by  the  vehicle,  or 
whether,  as  I rather  think,  the  tendency  of  national  feel- 
ing has  been  followed  in  the  use  of  the  most  appropriate 
means.  Something  is  to  be  attributed  to  the  increased 
demand  for  slighter  works  of  art,  and  much  to  the  sense 
of  the  quality  of  objects  now  called  picturesque,  which 
appears  to  be  exclusively  of  modern  origin.  From  what 
feeling  the  character  of  middle-age  architecture  and  cos- 


182 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


tume  arose,  or  with  what  kind  of  affection  their  forms 
were  regarded  by  the  inventors,  I am  utterly  unable  to 
guess ; but  of  this  I think  we  may  be  assured,  that  the 
natural  instinct  and  child-like  wisdom  of  those  days  were 
altogether  different  from  the  modern  feeling,  which  ap- 
pears to  have  taken  its  origin  in  the  absence  of  such  ob- 
jects, and  to  be  based  rather  on  the  strangeness  of  their 
occurrence  than  on  any  real  affection  for  them  ; and 
which  is  certainly  so  shallow  and  ineffective  as  to  be 
instantly  and  always  sacrificed  by  the  majority  to  fash- 
ion, comfort,  or  economy.  Yet  I trust  that  there  is  a 
healthy  though  feeble  love  of  nature  mingled  with  it, 
nature  pure,  separate,  felicitous,  which  is  also  peculiar 
to  the  moderns;  and  as  signs  of  this  feeling,  or  min- 
isters to  it,  I look  with  veneration  upon  many  works 
which,  in  a technical  point  of  view,  are  of  minor  im- 
portance. 

I have  been  myself  indebted  for  much  teaching  and 
more  delight  to  those  of  the  late  G.  Bobson.  Weak- 
§ 20.  g.  Robeon,  nesses  there  are  in  them  manifold,  much 
use  of°xthe  tom  bad  drawing,  much  forced  color,  much  over- 
“ style.”  finish,  little  of  wdiat  artists  call  composi- 

tion ; but  there  is  thorough  affection  for  the  thing 
drawn  ; they  are  serious  and  quiet  in  the  highest  degree, 
certain  qualities  of  atmosphere  and  texture  in  them  have 
never  been  excelled,  and  certain  facts  of  mountain  scen- 
ery never  but  by  them  expressed,  as,  for  instance,  the 
stillness  and  depth  of  the  mountain  tarns,  with  the  re- 
versed imagery  of  their  darkness  signed  across  by  the 
soft  lines  of  faintly  touching  winds  ; the  solemn  flush  of 
the  brown  fern  and  glowing  heath  under  evening  light ; 
the  purple  mass  of  mountains  far  removed,  seen  against 
clear  still  twilight.  With  equal  gratitude  I look  to  the 
drawings  of  David  Cox,  which,  in  spite  of  their  loose  and 
seemingly  careless  execution,  are  not  less  serious  in  their 
meaning,  nor  less  important  in  their  truth.  I must, 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


1S3 


however,  in  reviewing  those  modern  works  in  which  cer- 
tain modes  of  execution  are  particularly  manifested,  in- 
sist especially  on  this  general  principle,  applicable  to  all 
times  of  art ; that  what  is  usually  called  the  style  or 
manner  of  an  artist  is,  in  all  good  art,  nothing  but  the 
best  means  of  getting  at  the  p articular  truth  which  the 
artist  w anted ; it  is  not  a mode  peculiar  to  himself  of 
getting  at  the  same  truths  as  other  men,  but  the  only 
mode  of  getting  the  particular  facts  he  desires,  and  which 
mode,  if  others  had  desired  to  express  those  facts,  they 
also  must  have  adopted.  All  habits  of  execution  per- 
sisted in  under  no  such  necessity,  but  because  the  artist 
has  invented  them,  or  desires  to  show  his  dexterity  in 
them,  are  utterly  base ; for  every  good  painter  finds  so 
much  difficulty  in  reaching  the  end  he  sees  and  desires, 
that  he  has  no  time  nor  power  left  for  playing  tricks  on 
the  road  to  it ; he  catches  at  the  easiest  and  best  means 
he  can  get  ; it  is  possible  that  such  means  may  be  sin- 
gular, and  then  it  will  be  said  that  his  style  is  strange ; 
but  it  is  not  a style  at  all,  it  is  the  saying  of  a particular 
thing  in  the  only  way  in  which  it  possibly  can  be  said. 
Thus  the  reed  pen  outline  and  peculiar  touch  of  Prout, 
which  are  frequently  considered  as  mere  manner,  are  in 
fact  the  only  means  of  expressing  the  crumbling  charac- 
ter of  stone  which  the  artist  loves  and  desires.  That 
character  never  has  been  expressed  except  by  him,  nor 
will  it  ever  be  expressed  except  by  his  means.  And  it  is 
of  the  greatest  importance  to  distinguish  this  kind  of 
necessary  and  virtuous  manner  from  the  conventional 
manners  very  frequent  in  derivative  schools,  and  always 
utterly  to  be  contemned,  wherein  an  artist,  desiring  noth- 
ing and  feeling  nothing,  executes  everything  in  his  own 
particular  mode,  and  teaches  emulous  scholars  how  to  do 
with  difficulty  what  might  have  been  done  with  ease.  It 
is  true  that  there  are  sometimes  instances  in  which  great 
masters  have  employed  different  means  of  getting  at  the 


184 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


same  end,  but  in  these  cases  their  choice  has  been  always 
of  those  which  to  them  appeared  the  shortest  and  most 
complete ; their  practice  has  never  been  prescribed  by 
affectation  or  continued  from  habit,  except  so  far  as  must 
be  expected  from  such  weakness  as  is  common  to  all 
men ; from  hands  that  necessarily  do  most  readily  what 
they  are  most  accustomed  to  do,  and  minds  always  liable 
to  prescribe  to  the  hands  that  which  they  can  do  most 
readily. 

The  recollection  of  this  will  keep  us  from  being*  of- 
fended with  the  loose  and  blotted  handling  of  David 
Cox.  There  is  no  other  means  by  which  his  object  could 
be  attained.  The  looseness,  coolness,  and  moisture  of 
his  herbage;  the  rustling  crumpled  freshness  of  his 
broad-leaved  weeds ; the  play  of  pleasant  light  across  his 
deep  heathered  moor  or  plashing  sand ; the  melting  of 
fragments  of  white  mist  into  the  dropping  blue  above ; 
all  this  has  not  been  fully  recorded  except  by  him,  and 
what  there  is  of  accidental  in  his  mode  of  reaching  it, 
answers  gracefully  to  the  accidental  part  of  nature  her- 
self, Yet  he  is  capable  of  more  than  this,  and  if  he  suf- 
fers himself  uniformly  to  paint  beneath  his  capability, 
that  which  began  in  feeling  must  necessarily  end  in  man- 
ner. He  paints  too  many  small  pictures,  and  perhaps 
has  of  late  permitted  his  peculiar  execution  to  be  more 
manifest  than  is  necessary.  Of  this,  he  is  himself  the 
best  judge.  For  almost  all  faults  of  this  kind  the  public 
are  answerable,  not  the  painter.  I have  alluded  to  one 
of  his  grander  works — such  as  I should  wish  always  to 
see  him  paint — in  the  preface;  another,  I think  still 
finer,  a red  sunset  on  distant  hills,  almost  unequalled  for 
truth  and  power  of  color,  was  painted  by  him  several 
years  ago,  and  remains,  I believe,  in  his  own  posses- 
sion. 

The  deserved  popularity  of  Copley  Fielding  has  ren- 
dered it  less  necessary  for  me  to  allude  frequently  to  his 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


185 


works  in  tlie  following  pages  than  it  would  otherwise 
have  been,  more  especially  as  my  own  sympathies  and 
enjoyments  are  so  entirely  directed  in  the 

, J , T-ii-  ii  i-i  i T §21>  Copley  Field- 

cnannel  which  his  art  has  taken,  that  1 am  mg.  Phenomena 
afraid  of  trusting  them  too  far.  Yet  I may,  01  distant  c°‘°x’ 
perhaps,  be  permitted  to  speak  of  myself  so  far  as  I sup- 
pose my  own  feelings  to  be  representative  of  those  of  a 
class ; and  I suppose  that  there  are  many  who,  like  my- 
self, at  some  period  of  their  life  have  derived  more  in- 
tense and  healthy  pleasure  from  the  works  of  this  painter 
than  of  any  other  whatsoever ; healthy,  because  always 
based  on  his  faithful  and  simple  rendering  of  nature, 
and  that  of  very  lovely  and  impressive  nature,  altogether 
freed  from  coarseness,  violence,  or  vulgarity.  Various 
references  to  that  wdiich  he  has  attained  will  be  found 
subsequently : what  I am  now  about  to  say  respecting 
what  he  has  not  attained,  is  not  in  depreciation  of  what 
he  has  accomplished,  but  in  regret  at  his  suffering 
powers  of  a high  order  to  remain  in  any  measure  dor- 
mant. 

He  indulges  himself  too  much  in  the  use  of  crude 
color.  Pure  cobalt,  violent  rose,  and  purple,  are  of  fre- 
quent occurrence  in  his  distances;  pure  siennas  and 
other  browns  in  his  foregrounds,  and  that  not  as  expres- 
sive of  lighted  but  of  local  color.  The  reader  will  find 
in  the  following  chapters  that  I am  no  advocate  for  sub- 
dued coloring ; but  crude  color  is  not  bright  color,  and 
there  was  never  a noble  or  brilliant  work  of  color  yet 
produced,  whose  real  form  did  not  depend  on  the  sub- 
duing of  its  tints  rather  than  the  elevation  of  them. 

It  is  perhaps  one  of  the  most  difficult  lessons  to  learn 
'in  art,  that  the  warm  colors  of  distance,  even  the  most 
glowing,  are  subdued  by  the  air  so  as  in  no  wise  to  re- 
semble the  same  color  seen  on  a foreground  object ; so 
that  the  rose  of  sunset  on  clouds  or  mountains  has  a gray 
in  it  which  distinguishes  it  from  the  rose  color  of  the 


186 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


leaf  of  a flower ; and  the  mingling  of  this  gray  of  dis- 
tance, without  in  the  slightest  degree  taking  away  the 
expression  of  the  intense  and  perfect  purity  of  the  color 
in  and  by  itself,  is  perhaps  the  last  attainment  of  the 
great  landscape  colorist.  In  the  same  way  the  blue  of 
distance,  however  intense,  is  not  the  blue  of  a bright  blue 
flower,  and  it  is  not  distinguished  from  it  by  different 
texture  merely,  but  by  a certain  intermixture  and  under- 
current of  warm  color,  which  is  altogether  wanting  in 
many  of  the  blues  of  Fielding’s  distances;  and  so  of 
every  bright  distant  color ; while  in  foreground  where 
colors  may  be,  and  ought  to  be,  pure,  yet  that  any  of 
them  are  expressive  of  light  is  only  to  be  felt  where  there 
is  the  accurate  fitting  of  them  to  their  relative  shadows 
which  we  find  in  the  works  of  Giorgione,  Titian,  Tinto- 
ret,  Veronese,  Turner,  and  all  other  great  colorists  in 
proportion  as  they  are  so.  Of  this  fitting  of  light  to 
shadow  Fielding  is  altogether  regardless,  so  that  his 
foregrounds  are  constantly  assuming  the  aspect  of  over- 
charged local  color  instead  of  sunshine,  and  his  figures 
and  cattle  look  transparent. 

Again,  the  finishing  of  Fielding’s  foregrounds,  as  re- 
gards their  drawing,  is  minute  without  accuracy,  multi- 
22  tudinous  without  thought,  and  confused 

mountain**  f ore-  without  mystery.  Where  execution  is  seen 
to  be  in  measure  accidental,  as  in  Cox,  it 
may  be  received  as  representative  of  what  is  accidental 
in  nature  ; but  there  is  no  part  of  Fielding’s  foreground 
that  is  accidental ; it  is  evidently  worked  and  re-worked, 
dotted,  rubbed,  and  finished  with  great  labor,  and  where 
the  virtue,  playfulness,  and  freedom  of  accident  are  thus 
removed,  one  of  two  virtues  must  be  substituted  for  them. 
Either  we  must  have  the  deeply  studied  and  imaginative 
foreground,  of  which  every  part  is  necessary  to  every 
other,  and  whose  every  spark  of  light  is  essential  to  the 
well-being  of  the  whole,  of  which  the  foregrounds  of 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


187 


Turner  in  the  Liber  Stndiorum  are  the  most  eminent 
examples  I know,  or  else  we  must  have  in  some  measure 
the  botanical  faithfulness  and  realization  of  the  early 
masters.  Neither  of  these  virtues  is  to  be  found  in  Field- 
ing’s. Its  features,  though  grouped  with  feeling,  are  yet 
scattered  and  inessential.  Any  one  of  them  might  be  al- 
tered in  many  ways  without  doing  harm ; there  is  no  pro- 
portioned, necessary,  unalterable  relation  among  them  ; 
no  evidence  of  invention  or  of  careful  thought,  while  on 
the  other  hand  there  is  no  botanical  or  geological  accu- 
racy, nor  any  point  on  which  the  eye  may  rest  with  thor- 
ough contentment  in  its  realization. 

It  seems  strange  that  to  an  artist  of  so  quick  feeling 
the  details  of  a mountain  foreground  should  not  prove 
irresistibly  attractive,  and  entice  him  to  greater  accuracy 
of  study.  There  is  not  a fragment  of  its  living  rock,  nor 
a tuft  of  its  heathery  herbage,  that  has  not  adorable 
manifestations  of  God’s  working  thereupon.  The  har- 
monies of  color  among  the  native  lichens  are  better  than 
Titian’s ; the  interwoven  bells  of  campanula  and  heather 
are  better  than  all  the  arabesques  of  the  Vatican ; they 
need  no  improvement,  arrangement,  nor  alteration,  noth- 
ing but  love,  and  every  combination  of  them  is  different 
from  every  other,  so  that  a painter  need  never  repeat 
himself  if  he  will  only  be  true ; yet  all  these  sources  of 
power  have  been  of  late  entirely  neglected  by  Fielding ; 
there  is  evidence  through  all  his  foregrounds  of  their 
being  mere  home  inventions,  and  like  all  home  inven- 
tions they  exhibit  perpetual  resemblances  and  repeti- 
tions ; the  painter  is  evidently  embarrassed  without  his 
rutted  road  in  the  middle,  and  his  boggy  pool  at  the 
side,  which  pool  he  has  of  late  painted  in  hard  lines  of 
violent  blue:  there  is  not  a stone,  even  of  the  nearest 
and  most  important,  which  has  its  real  lichens  upon  it, 
or  a studied  form  or  anything  more  to  occupy  the  mind 
than  certain  variations  of  dark  and  light  browns.  The 


188 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


same  faults  must  be  found  with  his  present  painting  of 
foliage,  neither  the  stems  nor  leafage  being  ever  studied 
from  nature ; and  this  is  the  more  to  be  regretted,  be- 
cause in  the  earlier  works  of  the  artist  there  was  much 
admirable  drawing,  and  even  yet  his  power  is  occasion- 
ally developed  in  his  larger  works,  as  in  a Bolton  Ab- 
bey on  canvas,  which  was, — I cannot  say,  exhibited, — 
but  was  in  the  rooms  of  the  Boyal  Academy  in  1843.* 
I should  have  made  the  preceding  remarks  with  more 
hesitation  and  diffidence,  but  that,  from  a comparison 
of  works  of  this  kind  with  the  slighter  ornaments  of  the 
water-color  rooms,  it  seems  evident  that  the  painter  is 
not  unaware  of  the  deficiencies  of  these  latter,  and  con- 

* It  appears  not  to  be  sufficiently  understood  by  those  artists  who 
complain  acrimoniously  of  their  position  on  the  Academy  walls,  that 
the  Academicians  have  in  their  own  rooms  a right  to  the  line  and  the 
best  places  near  it ; in  their  taking  this  position  there  is  no  abuse  nor 
injustice  ; but  the  Academicians  should  remember  that  with  their  rights 
they  have  their  duties,  and  their  duty  is  to  determine  among  the  works 
of  artists  not  belonging  to  their  body  those  which  are  most  likely  to 
advance  public  knowledge  and  judgment,  and  to  give  these  the  best 
places  next  their  own  ; neither  would  it  detract  from  their  dignity  it 
they  occasionally  ceded  a square  even  of  their  own  territory,  as  they 
did  gracefully  and  rightly,  and,  I am  sorry  to  add,  disinterestedly,  to 
the  picture  of  Paul  de  la  Roche,  in  1844.  Now  the  Academicians 
know  perfectly  well  that  the  mass  of  portrait  which  encumbers  their 
walls  at  half  height  is  worse  than  useless,  seriously  harmful  to  the 
public  taste,  and  it  was  highly  criminal  (I  use  the'word  advisedly)  that 
the  valuable  and  interesting  work  of  Fielding,  of  which  I have  above 
spoken,  should  have  been  placed  where  it  was,  above  three  rows  of 
eye-glasses  and  waistcoats.  A very  beautiful  work  of  Harding’s  was 
treated  either  in  the  same  or  the  following  exhibition,  with  still  greater 
injustice.  Fielding’s  was  merely  put  out  of  sight ; Harding’s  where 
its  faults  were  conspicuous  and  its  virtues  lost.  It  was  an  Alpine 
scene,  of  which  the  foreground,  rocks,  and  torrents  were  painted 
with  unrivalled  fidelity  and  precision  ; the  foliage  was  dexterous,  the 
aerial  gradations  of  the  mountains  tender  and  multitudinous,  their 
forms  carefully  studied  and  very  grand.  The  blemish  of  the  picture 
was  a buff-colored  tower  with  a red  roof  ; singularly  meagre  in  detail, 
and  conventionally  relieved  from  a mass  of  gloom.  The  picture  was 
placed  where  nothing  but  this  tower  could  be  seen. 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES . 


189 


§ 23.  De  Wint. 


cedes  something  of  what  he  would  himself  desire  to  what 
he  has  found  to  he  the  feeling  of  a majority  of  his  admir- 
ers. This  is  a dangerous  modesty,  and  especially  so  in 
these  days  when  the  judgment  of  the  many  is  palpably 
as  artificial  as  their  feeling  is  cold. 

There  is  much  that  is  instructive  and  deserving  of  high 
praise  in  the  sketches  of  De  Wint.  Yet  it  is  to  be 
remembered  that  even  the  pursuit  of  truth, 
however  determined,  will  have  results  lim- 
ited and  imperfect  when  its  chief  motive  is  the  pride  of 
being  true  ; and  I fear  that  these  works,  sublime  as  many 
of  them  have  unquestionably  been,  testify  more  accu- 
racy of  eye  and  experience  of  color  than  exercise  of 
thought.  Their  truth  of  effect  is  often  purchased  at  too 
great  an  expense  by  the  loss  of  all  beauty  of  form,  and 
of  the  higher  refinements  of  color ; deficiencies,  however, 
on  which  I shall  not  insist,  since  the  value  of  the 
sketches,  as  far  they  go,  is  great ; they  have  done  good 
service  and  set  good  example,  and  whatever  their  fail- 
ings may  be,  there  is  evidence  in  them  that  the  painter 
has  always  done  what  he  believed  to  be  right. 

The  influence  of  the  masters  of  whom  we  have  hith- 
erto spoken  is  confined  to  those  who  have  access  to  their 
actual  works,  since  the  particular  qualities 

, . , . , ’ , . . . , § 24.  Influence  of 

m which  they  excel,  are  m no  wise  to  be  Engraving,  j.  d. 
rendered  by  the  engraver.  Those  of  whom  Haidmg‘ 
we  have  next  to  speak  are  known  to  the  public  in  a great 
measure  by  the  help  of  the  engraver ; and  while  their 
influence  is  thus  very  far  extended,  their  modes  of  work- 
ing are  perhaps,  in  some  degree  modified  by  the  habit- 
ual reference  to  the  future  translation  into  light  and 
shade ; reference  which  is  indeed  beneficial  in  the  care  it 
induces  respecting  the  arrangement  of  the  chiaroscuro 
and  the  explanation  of  the  forms,  but  which  is  harmful, 
so  far  as  it  involves  a dependence  rather  on  quantity  of 
picturesque  material  than  on  substantial  color  or  simple 


190 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


treatment,  and  as  it  admits  of  indolent  diminution  of  size 
and  slightness  of  execution. 

We  should  not  be  just  to  the  present  works  of  J.  D. 
Harding  unless  he  took  this  influence  into  account. 
Some  years  back  none  of  our  artists  realized  more  labo- 
riously, nor  obtained  more  substantial  color  and  texture ; 
a large  drawing  in  the  possession  of  B.  G.  Windus,  Esq., 
of  Tottenham,  is  of  great  value  as  an  example  of  his 
manner  at  the  period;  a manner  not  only  careful,  but 
earnest,  and  free  from  any  kind  of  affectation.  Partly 
from  the  habit  of  making  slight  and  small  drawings 
for  engravers,  and  partly  also,  I imagine,  from  an  over- 
strained seeking  after  appearances  of  dexterity  in  execu- 
tion, his  drawings  have  of  late  years  become  both  less 
solid  and  less  complete ; not,  however,  without  attaining 
certain  brilliant  qualities  in  exchange  which  are  very 
valuable  in  the  treatment  of  some  of  the  looser  portions 
of  subject.  Of  the  extended  knowledge  and  various 
powers  of  this  painter,  frequent  instances  are  noted  in 
the  following  pages.  Neither,  perhaps,  are  rightly  esti- 
mated among  artists,  owing  to  a certain  coldness  of  sen- 
timent in  his  choice  of  subject,  and  a continual  prefer- 
ence of  the  picturesque  to  the  impressive ; proved  per- 
haps in  nothing  so  distinctly  as  in  the  little  interest 
usually  attached  to  his  skies,  which,  if  aerial  and  expres- 
sive of  space  and  movement,  content  him,  though  desti- 
tute of  story,  power,  or  character : an  exception  must  be 
made  in  favor  of  the  very  grand  sunrise  on  the  Swiss 
Alps,  exhibited  in  1844,  wherein  the  artist’s  real  power 
was  in  some  measure  displayed,  though  I am  convinced 
he  is  still  capable  of  doing  far  greater  things.  So  in  his 
foliage  he  is  apt  to  sacrifice  the  dignity  of  his  trees  to 
their  wildness,  and  lose  the  forest  in  the  copse,  neither 
is  he  at  all  accurate  enough  in  his  expression  of  species 
or  realization  of  near  portions.  These  are  deficiencies, 
be  it  observed,  of  sentiment,  not  of  perception,  as  there 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


191 


are  few  who  equal  him  in  rapidity  of  seizure  of  material 
truth. 

Yery  extensive  influence  in  modern  art  must  be  at- 
tributed to  the  works  of  Samuel  Prout;  and  as  there 
are  some  circumstances  belonging*  to  his 

i • i -j-1  § 25.  Samuel 

treatment  of  architectural  subject  which  Prout.  Early 

. • 1 1 • j i i p n painting  of  archi- 

ll does  not  come  within  the  sphere  ol  the  tecture,  how  den- 

following  chapters  to  examine,  I shall  en- 
deavor to  note  the  more  important  of  them  here. 

Let  us  glance  back  for  a moment  to  the  architectural 
drawing  of  earlier  times.  Before  the  time  of  the  Bel- 
linis at  Venice,  and  of  Ghirlandajo  at  Florence,  I believe 
there  are  no  examples  of  anything  beyond  conventional 
representation  of  architecture,  often  rich,  quaint,  and 
full  of  interest,  as  Memmi’s  abstract  of  the  Duomo  at 
Florence  at  Sta.  Maria  Novella;  but  not  to  be  classed 
with  any  genuine  efforts  at  representation.  It  is  much 
to  be  regretted  that  the  power  and  custom  of  introduc- 
ing well-drawn  architecture  should  have  taken  place 
only  when  architectural  taste  had  been  itself  corrupted, 
and  that  the  architecture  introduced  by  Bellini,  Ghir- 
landajo,  Francia,  and  the  other  patient  and  pov/erful 
workmen  of  the  fifteenth  century,  is  exclusively  of  the 
renaissance  styles ; while  their  drawing  of  it  furnishes 
little  that  is  of  much  interest  to  the  architectural 
draughtsman  as  such,  being  always  governed  by  a ref- 
erence to  its  subordinate  position,  so  that  all  forceful 
shadow  and  play  of  color  are  (most  justly)  surrendered 
for  quiet  and  uniform  hues  of  gray  and  chiaroscuro  of 
extreme  simplicity.  Whatever  they  chose  to  do  they 
did  with  consummate  grandeur,  (note  especially  the  chia- 
roscuro of  the  square  window  of  Ghirlandajo’s,  which  so 
much  delighted  Vasari,  in  Sta.  Maria  Novella;  and  the 
daring  management  of  a piece  of  the  perspective  in  the 
Salutation,  opposite,  where  he  has  painted  a flight  of 
stairs  descending  in  front,  though  the  picture  is  twelve 


192 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


feet  above  the  eye) ; and  yet  this  grandeur,  in  all  these 
men,  results  rather  from  the  general  power  obtained  in 
their  drawing  of  the  figure  than  from  any  definite  knowl- 
edge respecting  the  things  introduced  in  these  accessory 
parts ; so  that  while  in  some  points  it  is  impossible  for 
any  painter  to  equal  these  accessories,  unless  he  were  in 
all  respects  as  great  as  Ghirlandajo  or  Bellini,  in  others 
it  is  possible  for  him,  with  far  inferior  powers,  to  attain 
a representation  both  more  accurate  and  more  interest- 
ing. 

In  order  to  arrive  at  the  knowledge  of  these,  we  must 
briefly  take  note  of  a few  of  the  modes  in  which  architec- 
ture itself  is  agreeable  to  the  mind,  especially  of  the  in- 
fluence upon  the  character  of  the  building  which  is  to  be 
attributed  to  the  signs  of  age. 

It  is  evident,  first,  that  if  the  design  of  the  building  be 
originally  bad,  the  only  virtue  it  can  ever  possess  will  be 
§ 2g.  Effects  of  in  signs  of  antiquity.  All  that  in  this 
m|s,  how  faxde-  world  enlarges  the  sphere  of  affection  or 
sirabie.  imagination  is  to  be  reverenced,  and  all 

those  circumstances  enlarge  it  which  strengthen  our 
memory  or  quicken  our  conception  of  the  dead;  hence 
it  is  no  light  sin  to  destroy  anything  that  is  old,  more 
especially  because,  even  with  the  aid  of  all  obtainable 
records  of  the  past,  we,  the  living,  occupy  a space  of 
too  large  importance  and  interest  in  our  own  eyes ; we 
look  upon  the  world  too  much  as  our  own,  too  much  as 
if  we  had  possessed  it  and  should  possess  it  forever,  and 
forget  that  it  is  a mere  hostelry,  of  which  we  occupy 
the  apartments  for  a time,  which  others  better  than  we 
have  sojourned  in  before,  who  are  now  where  we  should 
desire  to  be  with  them.  Fortunately  for  mankind,  as 
some  counterbalance  to  that  wretched  love  of  novelty 
which  originates  in  selfishness,  shallowness,  and  conceit, 
and  which  especially  characterizes  all  vulgar  minds, 
there  is  set  in  the  deeper  places  of  the  heart  such  affec- 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES . 


193 


tion  for  the  signs  of  age  that  the  eye  is  delighted  even 
by  injuries  which  are  the  work  of  time;  not  but  that 
there  is  also  real  and  absolute  beauty  in  the  forms  and 
colors  so  obtained,  for  which  the  original  lines  of  the 
architecture,  unless  they  have  been  very  grand  indeed, 
are  well  exchanged,  so  that  there  is  hardly  any  building 
so  ugly  but  that  it  may  be  made  an  agreeable  object  by 
such  appearances.  It  would  not  be  easy,  for  instance,  to 
find  a less  pleasing  piece  of  architecture  than  the  portion 
of  the  front  of  Queen’s  College,  Oxford,  which  has  just 
been  restored  ; yet  I believe  that  few  persons  could  have 
looked  with  total  indifference  on  the  mouldering  and 
peeled  surface  of  the  oolite  limestone  previous  to  its 
restoration.  If,  however,  the  character  of  the  building 
consist  in  minute  detail  or  multitudinous  lines,  the  evil 
or  good  effect  of  age  upon  it  must  depend  in  great  meas- 
ure on  the  kind  of  art,  the  material,  and  the  climate. 
The  Parthenon,  for  instance,  would  be  injured  by  any 
markings  which  interfered  with  the  contours  of  its  sculpt- 
ures; and  any  lines  of  extreme  purity,  or  colors  of 
original  harmony  and  perfection  are  liable  to  injury, 
and  are  ill  exchanged  for  mouldering  edges  or  brown 
weatherstains. 

But  as  all  architecture  is,  or  ought  to  be,  meant  to  be 
durable,  and  to  derive  part  of  its  glory  from  its  antiq- 
uity, all  art  that  is  liable  to  mortal  injury  from  effects 
of  time  is  therein  out  of  place,  and  this  is  another  rea- 
son for  the  principle  I have  asserted  in  the  second 
part,  page  314.  I do  not  at  this  instant  recollect  a 
single  instance  of  any  very  fine  building  which  is  not 
improved  up  to  a certain  period  by  all  its  signs  of 
age,  after  which  period,  like  all  other  human  works,  it 
necessarily  declines,  its  decline  being  in  almost  ail  ages 
and  countries  accelerated  by  neglect  and  abuse  in  its 
time  of  beauty,  and  alteration  or  restoration  in  its  time 
of  age. 


n 


194 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


Thus  I conceive  that  all  buildings  dependent  on  color, 
whether  of  mosaic  or  painting,  have  their  effect  im- 
proved by  the  richness  of  the  subsequent  tones  of 
age ; for  there  are  few  arrangements  of  color  so  per- 
fect but  that  they  are  capable  of  improvement  by 
some  softening  and  blending  of  this  kind : with  mosaic, 
the  improvement  may  be  considered  as  proceeding  al- 
most so  long  as  the  design  can  be  distinctly  seen ; with 
painting,  so  long  as  the  colors  do  not  change  or  chip 
off. 

Again,  upon  all  forms  of  sculptural  ornament,  the  ef- 
fect of  time  is  such,  that  if  the  design  be  poor,  it  will 
enrich  it ; if  overcharged,  simplify  it ; if  harsh  and  vio- 
lent, soften  it ; if  smooth  and  obscure,  exhibit  it ; what- 
ever faults  it  may  have  are  rapidly  disguised,  whatever 
virtue  it  has  still  shines  and  steals  out  in  the  mellow 
light;  and  this  to  such  an  extent,  that  the  artist  is  al- 
ways liable  to  be  tempted  to  the  drawing  of  details  in 
old  buildings  as  of  extreme  beauty,  which  look  cold  and 
hard  in  their  architectural  lines ; and  I have  never  yet 
seen  any  restoration  or  cleaned  portion  of  a building 
whose  effect  was  not  inferior  to  the  weathered  parts, 
even  to  those  of  which  the  design  had  in  some  parts  al- 
most disappeared.  On  the  front  of  the  church  of  San 
Michele  at  Lucca,  the  mosaics  have  fallen  out  of  half  the 
columns,  and  lie  in  weedy  ruin  beneath ; in  many,  the 
frost  has  torn  large  masses  of  the  entire  coating  away, 
leaving  a scarred  unsightly  surface.  Two  of  the  shafts 
of  the  upper  star  window  are  eaten  entirely  away  by  the 
sea  wind,  the  rest  have  lost  their  proportions,  the  edges 
of  the  arches  are  hacked  into  deep  hollows,  and  cast  in- 
dented shadows  on  the  weed-grown  wall.  The  process 
has  gone  too  far,  and  yet  I doubt  not  but  that  this 
building  is  seen  to  greater  advantage  now  than  when 
first  built,  always  with  exception  of  one  circumstance, 
that  the  French  shattered  the  lower  wheel  window, 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES . 


195 


and  set  np  in  front  of  it  an  escutcheon  with  “ Libertas  ” 
upon  it,  which  abomination  of  desolation,  the  Lucchese 
have  not  yet  had  human-heartedness  enough  to  pull 
down. 

Putting  therefore  the  application  of  architecture  as  an 
accessory  out  of  the  question,  and  supposing  our  object 
to  be  the  exhibition  of  the  most  impressive  qualities  of 
the  building  itself,  it  is  evidently  the  duty  of  the 
draughtsman  to  represent  it  under  those  conditions,  and 
with  that  amount  of  age-mark  upon  it  which  may  best 
exalt  and  harmonize  the  sources  of  its  beauty : this  is 
no  pursuit  of  mere  picturesqueness,  it  is  true  following 
out  of  the  ideal  character  of  the  building ; nay,  far  greater 
dilapidation  than  this  may  in  portions  be  exhibited,  for 
there  are  beauties  of  other  kinds,  not  otherwise  attain- 
able, brought  out  by  advanced  dilapidation ; but  when 
the  artist  suffers  the  mere  love  of  ruinousness  to  inter- 
fere with  his  perception  of  the  art  of  the  building,  and 
substitutes  rude  fractures  and  blotting  stains  for  all  its 
fine  chiselling  and  determined  color,  he  has  lost  the  end 
of  his  own  art. 

So  far  of  aging ; next  of  effects  of  light  and  color.  It 
is,  I believe,  hardly  enough  observed  among  architects 
that  the  same  decorations  are  of  totally 

. . § 2T.  Effects  of 

different  effect  according  to  their  position  light  how  neces- 
and  the  time  of  day.  A moulding  which  Sd&gheofndIe- 
is  of  value  on  a building  facing  south, 
where  it  takes  deep  shadows  from  steep  sun,  may  be 
utterly  ineffective  if  placed  west  or  east ; and  a mould- 
ing which  is  chaste  and  intelligible  in  shade  on  a north 
side,  may  be  grotesque,  vulgar,  or  confused  when  it 
takes  black  shadows  on  the  south.  Farther,  there  is  a 
time  of  day  in  which  every  architectural  decoration  is 
seen  to  best  advantage,  and  certain  times  in  which  its 
peculiar  force  and  character  are  best  explained ; of  these 
niceties  the  architect  takes  little  cognisance,  as  he  must 


196 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


in  some  sort  calculate  on  tire  effect  of  ornament  at  all 
times ; but  to  the  artist  they  are  of  infinite  importance, 
and  especially  for  this  reason,  that  there  is  always  much 
detail  on  buildings  which  cannot  be  drawn  as  such, 
which  is  too  far  off,  or  too  minute,  and  which  must  con- 
sequently be  set  down  in  short  hand  of  some  kind  or 
another ; and,  as  it  were,  an  abstract,  more  or  less  philo- 
sophical, made  of  its  general  heads.  Of  the  style  of  this 
abstract,  of  the  lightness,  confusion,  and  mystery  neces- 
sary in  it,  I have  spoken  elsewhere ; at  present  I insist 
only  on  the  arrangement  and  matter  of  it.  All  good 
ornament  and  all  good  architecture  are  capable  of  being 
put  into  short-hand ; that  is,  each  has  a perfect  system 
of  parts,  principal  and  subordinate,  of  which,  even  when 
the  complemental  details  vanish  in  distance,  the  system 
and  anatomy  yet  remain  visible  so  long  as  anything  is 
visible ; so  that  the  divisions  of  a beautiful  spire  shall 
be  known  as  beautiful  even  till  their  last  line  vanishes 
in  blue  mist,  and  the  effect  of  a well-designed  moulding 
shall  be  visibly  disciplined,  harmonious,  and  inventive, 
as  long  as  it  is  seen  to  be  a moulding  at  all.  Now  the 
power  of  the  artist  of  marking  this  character  depends 
not  on  his  complete  knowledge  of  the  design,  but  on  his 
experimental  knowledge  of  its  salient  and  bearing  parts, 
and  of  the  effects  of  light  and  shadow,  by  which  their 
saliency  is  best  told.  He  must  therefore  be  prepared, 
according  to  his  subject,  to  use  light,  steep  or  level,  in- 
tense or  feeble,  and  out  of  the  resulting  chiaroscuro 
select  those  peculiar  and  hinging  points  on  which  the 
rest  are  based,  and  by  which  all  else  that  is  essential 
may  be  explained. 

The  thoughtful  command  of  all  these  circumstances 
constitutes  the  real  architectural  draughtsman ; the  hab- 
its of  executing  everything  either  under  one  kind  of 
effect  or  in  one  manner,  or  of  using  unintelligible  and 
meaningless  abstracts  of  beautiful  designs,  are  those 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


197 


which  must  commonly  take  the  place  of  it  and  are  the 
most  extensively  esteemed.* 

Let  us  now  proceed  with  our  review  of  those  artists 
who  have  devoted  themselves  more  peculiarly  to  archi- 
tectural subject. 

Foremost  among  them  stand  Gentile  Bellini  and  Yittor 
Carpaccio,  to  whom  we  are  indebted  for  the  only  exist- 
ing faithful  statements  of  the  architecture  p ^ 

of 'Old  Venice,  and  who  are  the  only  au-  urai  painting  of 

. . . . Gentile  Bellini 

thorities  to  whom  we  can  trust  m conject-  and  vittor  car- 
uring  the  former  beauty  of  those  few  dese- 
crated fragments,  the  last  of  which  are  now  being  rap- 
idly swept  away  by  the  idiocy  of  modern  Venetians. 

Nothing  can  be  more  careful,  nothing  more  delicately 
finished,  or  more  dignified  in  feeling  than  the  works  of 
both  these  men ; and  as  architectural  evidence  they  are 
the  best  we  could  have  had,  all  the  gilded  parts  being 
gilt  in  the  picture,  so  that  there  can  be  no  mistake  or 
confusion  of  them  with  yellow  color  or  light,  and  all  the 
frescoes  or  mosaics  given  with  the  most  absolute  preci- 
sion and  fidelity.  At  the  same  time  they  are  by  no 
means  examples  of  perfect  architectural  drawing ; there 
is  little  light  and  shade  in  them  of  any  kind,  and  none 
whatever  of  the  thoughtful  observance  of  temporary  ef- 
fect of  which  we  have  just  been  speaking ; so  that,  in 
rendering  the  character  of  the  relieved  parts,  their  solid- 
ity, depth,  or  gloom,  the  representation  fails  altogether, 
and  it  is  moreover  lifeless  from  its  very  completion, 
both  the  signs  of  age  and  the  effects  of  use  and  habita- 
tion being  utterly  rejected;  rightly  so,  indeed,  in  these 
instances,  (all  the  architecture  of  these  painters  being  in 
background  to  religious  subject),  but  wrongly  so,  if  we 

* I have  not  given  any  examples  in  this  place,  because  it  is  difficult 
to  explain  such  circumstances  of  effect  without  diagrams  : I purpose 
entering  into  fuller  discussion  of  the  subject  with  the  aid  of  illustra- 


198 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


look  to  tlie  architecture  alone.  Neither  is  there  any- 
thing* like  aerial  perspective  attempted ; the  employment 
of  actual  gold  in  the  decoration  of  all  the  distances,  and 
the  entire  realization  of  their  details,  as  far  as  is  possi- 
ble on  the  scale  compelled  by  perspective,  being  alone 
sufficient  to  prevent  this,  except  in  the  hands  of  painters 
far  more  practised  in  effect  than  either  Gentile  or  Car- 
paccio. But  with  all  these  discrepancies,  Gentile  Bel- 
lini’s church  of  St.  Mark’s  is  the  best  church  of  St.  Mark’s 
that  has  ever  been  painted,  so  far  as  I know;  and  I 
believe  the  reconciliation  of  true  aerial  perspective  and 
chiaroscuro  with  the  splendor  and  dignity  obtained  by 
the  real  gilding  and  elaborate  detail,  is  a problem  yet  to 
be  accomplished.  With  the  help  of  the  Daguerreotype, 
and  the  lessons  of  color  given  by  the  later  Venetians, 
we  ought  now  to  be  able  to  accomplish  it,  more  espe- 
cially as  the  right  use  of  gold  has  been  shown  us  by  the 
greatest  master  of  effect  whom  V enice  herself  produced, 
Tintoret,  who  has  employed  it  with  infinite  grace  on  the 
steps  ascended  by  the  young  Madonna,  in  his  large  pict- 
ure in  the  church  of  the  Madonna  dell’  Orto.  Perugino 
uses  it  also  with  singular  grace,  often  employing  it  for 
golden  light  on  distant  trees,  and  continually  on  the 
high  light  of  hair,  and  that  without  losing  relative  dis- 
tances. 

The  great  group  of  Venetian  painters  who  brought 
landscape  art,  for  that  time,  to  its  culminating  point, 

29  Ad  of  the  ^ave  le^>  as  we  have  already  seen,  little 
Venetians  gener-  that  is  instructive  in  architectural  paint- 
ing. The  causes  of  this  I cannot  compre- 
hend, for  neither  Titian  nor  Tintoret  appears  to  despise 
anything  that  affords  them  either  variety  of  form  or  of 
color,  the  latter  especially  condescending  to  very  trivial 
details,— as  in  the  magnificent  carpet  painting  of  the 
Doge  Mocenigo;  so  that  it  might  have  been  expected 
that  in  the  rich  colors  of  St.  Mark’s,  and  the  magnificent 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


199 


and  fantastic  masses  of  the  Byzantine  palaces,  they  would 
have  found  whereupon  to  dwell  with  delighted  elabora- 
tion. This  is,  however,  never  the  case,  and  although 
frequently  compelled  to  introduce  portions  of  Venetian 
locality  in  their  backgrounds,  such  portions  are  always 
treated  in  a most  hasty  and  faithless  manner,  missing 
frequently  all  character  of  the  building,  and  never  ad- 
vanced to  realization.  In  Titian’s  picture  of  Faith,  the 
view  of  Venice  below  is  laid  in  so  rapidly  and  slightly, 
the  houses  all  leaning  this  way  and  that,  and  of  no  color, 
the  sea  a dead  gray  green,  and  the  ship -sails  mere  dashes 
of  the  brush,  that  the  most  obscure  of  Turner’s  Venices 
would  look  substantia]  beside  it ; while  in  the  very  pict- 
ure of  Tintoret  in  which  he  has  dwelt  so  elaborately  on 
the  carpet,  he  has  substituted  a piece  of  ordinary  renais- 
sance composition  for  St.  Mark’s,  and  in  the  background 
has  chosen  the  Sansovino  side  of  the  Piazzetta,  treating 
even  that  so  carelessly  as  to  lose  all  the  proportion  and 
beauty  of  its  design,  and  so  flimsily  that  the  line  of  the 
distant  sea  which  has  been  first  laid  in,  is  seen  through  all 
the  columns.  Evidences  of  magnificent  power  of  course 
exist  in  whatever  he  touches,  but  his  full  power  is  never 
turned  in  this  direction.  More  space  is  allowed  to  his 
architecture  by  Paul  Veronese,  but  it  is  still  entirely  sug- 
gestive, and  would  be  utterly  false  except  as  a frame  or 
background  for  figures.  The  same  may  be  said  with  re- 
spect to  Raffaelle  and  the  Roman  school. 

If,  however,  these  men  laid  architecture  little  under 
contribution  to  their  own  art,  they  made  their  own  art  a 
glorious  gift  to  architecture,  and  the  wails  of  Venice, 
which  before,  I believe,  had  received  color  only  in  ara- 
besque patterns,  were  lighted  with  human  § 30  Fresco 
life  by  Giorgione,  Titian,  Tintoret,  and  Venetian  °exteri- 
Veronese.  Of  the  works  of  Tintoret  and  ors*  Canaletto- 
Titian,  nothing  now,  I believe,  remains ; two  figures  of 
Giorgione’s  are  still  traceable  on  the  Fondaco  de’ 


200 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


Tedeschi,  one  of  which,  singularly  uninjured,  is  seen 
from  far  above  and  below  the  Rialto,  flaming  like  the  re- 
flection of  a sunset.  Two  figures  of  Veronese  were  also 
traceable  till  lately,  the  head  and  arms  of  one  still  re- 
main, and  some  glorious  olive-branches  which  were  be- 
side the  other ; the  figure  having  been  entirely  effaced 
by  an  inscription  in  large  black  letters  on  a whitewash 
tablet  which  we  owe  to  the  somewhat  inopportunely  ex- 
pressed enthusiasm  of  the  inhabitants  of  the  district  in 
favor  of  their  new  pastor.*  Judging,  however,  from  the 
rate  at  which  destruction  is  at  present  advancing,  and 
seeing  that,  in  about  seven  or  eight  years  more,  Venice 
will  have  utterly  lost  every  external  claim  to  interest, 
except  that  which  attaches  to  the  group  of  buildings  im- 
mediately around  St.  Mark’s  place,  and  to  the  larger 
churches,  it  may  be  conjectured  that  the  greater  part  of 
her  present  degradation  has  taken  place,  at  any  rate, 
within  the  last  forty  years.  Let  the  reader  with  such 
scraps  of  evidence  as  may  still  be  gleaned  from  under  the 
stucco  and  paint  of  the  Italian  committees  of  taste,  and 
from  among  the  drawing-room  innovations  of  English 
and  German  residents  restore  Venice  in  his  imagination 
to  some  resemblance  of  what  she  must  have  been  before 
her  fall.  Let  him,  looking  from  Lido  or  Eusina,  replace 

* The  inscription  is  to  the  following  effect, — a pleasant  thing  to  see 
upon  the  walls,  were  it  but  more  innocently  placed  : — 

CAMPO.  DI.  S.  MAURIZIO 
DIO 

CONSERVI  A NOI. 

LUNGAMENTE 

LO  ZELANTIS.  E.  REVERENDIS 
D.  LUIGI,  piccmi. 

NOSTRO 

NOVELLO  PIEVANO. 

GLI  ESULTANT. 

PARROCCHIANI 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


201 


in  the  forest  of  towers  those  of  the  hundred  and  sixty-six 
churches  which  the  French  threw  down ; let  him  sheet 
her  walls  with  purple  and  scarlet,  overlay  her  minarets 
with  gold,*  cleanse  from  their  pollution  those  choked 
canals  which  are  now  the  drains  of  hovels,  where  they 
were  once  vestibules  of  palaces,  and  fill  them  with  gilded 
barges  and  bannered  ships;  finally,  let  him  withdraw 
from  this  scene,  already  so  brilliant,  such  sadness  and 
stain  as  had  been  set  upon  it  by  the  declining  energies 
of  more  than  half  a century,  and  he  will  see  Venice  as  it 
was  seen  by  Canaletto ; whose  miserable,  virtueless,  heart- 
less mechanism,  accepted  as  the  representation  of  such 
various  glory,  is,  both  in  its  existence  and  acceptance, 
among  the  most  striking  signs  of  the  lost  sensation  and 
deadened  intellect  of  the  nation  at  that  time ; a numb- 
ness and  darkness  more  without  hope  than  that  of  the 
grave  itself,  holding  and  wearing  yet  the  sceptre  and  the 
crown  like  the  corpses  of  the  Etruscan  kings,  ready  to 
sink  into  ashes  at  the  first  unbarring  of  the  door  of  the 
sepulchre. 

The  mannerism  of  Canaletto  is  the  most  degraded  that 
I know  in  the  whole  range  of  art.  Professing  the  most 
servile  and  mindless  imitation,  it  imitates  nothing  but 
the  blackness  of  the  shadows;  it  gives  no  one  single 
architectural  ornament,  however  near,  so  much  form  as 
might  enable  us  even  to  guess  at  its  actual  one ; and  this 
I say  not  rashly,  for  I shall  prove  it  by  placing  portions 
of  detail  accurately  copied  from  Canaletto  side  by  side 
with  engravings  from  the  Daguerreotype ; it  gives  the 
buildings  neither  their  architectural  beauty  nor  their 

* The  quantity  of  gold  with  which  the  decorations  of  Venice  were 
once  covered  could  not  now  be  traced  or  credited  without  reference 
to  the  authority  of  Gentile  Bellini.  The  greater  part  of  the  marble 
mouldings  have  been  touched  with  it  in  lines  and  points,  the  minarets 
of  St.  Mark’s,  and  all  the  florid  carving  of  the  arches  entirely  sheeted. 
The  Casa  d’Oro  retained  it  on  its  lions  until  the  recent  commencement 
of  its  Restoration. 


202 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


ancestral  dignity,  for  there  is  no  texture  of  stone  nor 
character  of  age  in  Canaletto’s  touch ; which  is  invariably 
a violent,  black,  sharp,  ruled  penmanlike  line,  as  far  re- 
moved from  the  grace  of  nature  as  from  her  faintness 
and  transparency;  and  for  his  truth  of  color,  let  the 
single  fact  of  his  having  omitted  oil  record , whatsoever , 
of  the  frescoes  whose  wrecks  are  still  to  be  found  at  least 
on  one  half  of  the  unrestored  palaces,  and,  with  still  less 
* 'excusableness,  all  record  of  the  magnificent  colored  mar- 
bles of  many  whose  greens  and  purples  are  still  un- 
dimmed upon  the  Casa  Dario,  Casa  Bianca  Capello,  and 
multitudes  besides,  speak  for  him  in  this  respect. 

Let  it  be  observed  that  I find  no  fault  with  Canaletto, 
for  his  want  of  poetry,  of  feeling,  of  artistical  thought- 
fulness in  treatment,  or  of  the  various  other  virtues 
which  he  does  not  so  much  as  profess.  He  professes 
nothing  but  colored  Daguerreotypeism.  Let  us  have  it: 
most  precious  and  to  be  revered  it  would  be : let  us  have 
fresco  where  fresco  was,  and  that  copied  faithfully ; let 
us  have  carving  where  carving  is,  and  that  architecturally 
true.  I have  seen  Daguerreotypes  in  which  every  figure 
and  rosette,  and  crack  and  stain,  and  fissure  are  given  on 
a scale  of  an  inch  to  Canaletto’s  three  feet.  What  ex- 
cuse is  there  to  be  offered  for  his  omitting,  on  that  scale, 
as  I shall  hereafter  show,  all  statement  of  such  ornament 
whatever  ? Among  the  Flemish  schools,  exquisite  imita- 
tions of  architecture  are  found  constantly,  and  that  not 
with  Canaletto’s  vulgar,  black  exaggeration  of  shadow, 
but  in  the  most  pure  and  silvery  and  luminous  grays.  I 
have  little  pleasure  in  such  pictures ; but  I blame  not 
those  who  have  more ; they  are  what  they  profess  to  be, 
and  they  are  wonderful  and  instructive,  and  often  grace- 
ful, and  even  affecting,  but  Canaletto  possesses  no  virtue 
except  that  of  dexterous  imitation  of  commonplace  light 
and  shade,  and  perhaps,  with  the  exception  of  Salvator, 
no  artist  has  ever  fettered  his  unfortunate  admirers  more 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


203 


securely  from  all  healthy  or  vigorous  perception  of  truth, 
or  been  of  more  general  detriment  to  all  subsequent 
schools. 

Neither,  however,  by  the  Flemings,  nor  b y any  other 
of  the  elder  schools,  was  the  effect  of  age  or  of  human 
life  upon  architecture  ever  adequately  ex-  § 3L  Expression 
pressed.  What  ruins  they  drew  looked  as  afchitect- 

if  broken  down  on  purpose,  what  weeds  ure  by  s*  Prout‘ 
they  put  on  seemed  put  on  for  ornament.  Their  domes- 
tic buildings  had  never  any  domesticity,  the  people 
looked  out  of  their  windows  evidently  to  be  drawn,  or 
came  into  the  streets  only  to  stand  there  forever.  A pe- 
culiar studiousness  infected  all  accident ; bricks  fell  out 
methodically,  windows  opened  and  shut  by  rule ; stones 
were  chipped  at  regular  intervals ; everything  that  hap- 
pened seemed  to  have  been  expected  before  ; and  above 
all,  the  street  had  been  washed  and  the  houses  dusted 
expressly  to  be  painted  in  their  best.  We  owe  to  Prout, 
I believe,  the  first  perception,  and  certainly  the  only  ex- 
isting expression  of  precisely  the  characters  which  were 
wanting  to  old  art,  of  that  feeling  which  results  from  the 
influence  among  the  noble  lines  of  architecture,  of  the 
rent  and  the  rust,  the  fissure,  the  lichen,  and  the  weed, 
and  from  the  writing  upon  the  pages  of  ancient  walls  of 
the  confused  hieroglyphics  of  human  history.  I sup- 
pose, from  the  deserved  popularity  of  the  artist,  that  the 
strange  pleasure  which  I find  myself  in  the  deciphering 
of  these  is  common  to  many ; the  feeling  has  been  rashly 
and  thoughtlessly  contemned  as  mere  love  of  the  pictu- 
resque ; there  is,  as  I have  above  shown,  a deeper  moral  in 
it,  and  we  owe  much,  I am  not  prepared  to  say  how  much, 
to  the  artist  by  whom  pre-eminently  it  has  been  excited 
For,  numerous  as  have  been  his  imitators,  extended  as 
his  influence,  and  simple  as  his  means  and  manner,  there 
has  yet  appeared  nothing  at  all  to  equal  him  ; there  is  no 
stone  drawing,  no  vitality  of  architecture  like  Prout’s.  1 


204 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


say  not  this  rashly,  I have  Mackenzie  in  my  eye  and 
many  other  capital  imitators ; and  I have  carefully  re- 
viewed the  Architectural  work  of  the  Academicians,  often 
most  accurate  and  elaborate.  I repeat,  there  is  nothing 
but  the  work  of  Prout  which  is  true,  living,  or  right  in 
its  general  impression,  and  nothing,  therefore,  so  inex- 
haustibly agreeable.  Faults  he  has,  manifold,  easily  de- 
tected, and  much  declaimed  against  by  second-rate  ar- 
tists; but  his  excellence  no  one  has  ever  famched,  and  his 
lithographic  work,  (Sketches  in  Flanders  and  Germany,) 
which  was,  I believe,  the  first  of  the  kind,  still  remains 
the  most  valuable  of  all,  numerous  and  elaborate  as  its 
various  successors  have  been.  The  second  series  (in  Italy 
and  Switzerland)  was  of  less  value,  the  drawings  seemed 
more  laborious,  and  had  less  of  the  life  of  the  original 
sketches,  being  also  for  the  most  part  of  subjects  less 
adapted  for  the  development  of  the  artist’s  peculiar  pow- 
ers ; but  both  are  fine,  and  the  Brussels,  Louvain,  Co- 
logne, and  Nuremberg,  subjects  of  the  one,  together  with 
the  Tours,  Amboise,  Geneva,  and  Sion,  of  the  other,  ex- 
hibit substantial  qualities  of  stone  and  wood  drawing, 
together  with  an  ideal  appreciation  of  the  present  active 
vital  being  of  the  cities,  such  as  nothing  else  has  ever 
approached.  Their  value  is  much  increased  by  the  cir- 
cumstance of  their  being  drawn  by  the  artist’s  own  hand 
upon  the  stone,  and  by  the  consequent  manly  reckless- 
ness of  subordinate  parts,  (in  wrorks  of  this  kind,  be  it 
remembered,  much  is  subordinate,)  which  is  of  all  charac- 
ters of  execution  the  most  refreshing.  Note  the  scrawled 
middle  tint  of  the  wall  behind  the  Gothic  well  at  Batis- 
bonne,  and  compare  this  manly  piece  of  work  with  the 
wretched  smoothness  of  recent  lithography.  Let  it  not 
be  thought  that  there  is  any  inconsistency  between  what 
I say  here  and  what  I have  said  respecting  finish.  This 
piece  of  dead  wall  is  as  much  finished  in  relation  to  its 
function  as  a wall  of  Ghirlandajo’s  or  Leonardo’s  in  rela- 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES . 


205 


tion  to  theirs,  and  the  refreshing-  quality  is  the  same  in 
both,  and  manifest  in  all  great  masters,  without  excep- 
tion, that  of  the  utter  regardlessness  of  the  means  so  that 
their  end  be  reached.  The  same  kind  of  scrawling  occurs 
often  in  the  shade  of  Kaffaelle. 

It  is  not  only,  however,  by  his  peculiar  stone  touch  nor 
perception  of  human  character  that  he  is  distinguished. 
He  is  the  most  dexterous  of  all  our  artists  „ _ 

§ 32.  His  excellent 

nr  a certain  kind  ot  composition.  JNo  one  composition  and 
can  place  figures  like  him,  except  Turner. 

It  is  one  thing  to  know  where  a piece  of  blue  or  white 
is  wanted,  and  another  to  make  the  wearer  of  the  blue 
apron  or  white  cap  come  there,  and  not  look  as  if  it  were 
against  her  will.  Prout’s  streets  are  the  only  streets 
that  are  accidentally  crowded,  his  markets  are  the  only 
markets  where  one  feels  inclined  to  get  out  of  the  way. 
With  others  we  feel  the  figures  so  right  where  they  are, 
that  we  have  no  expectation  of  their  going  anywhere 
else,  and  approve  of  the  position  of  the  man  with  the 
wheelbarrow,  without  the  slightest  fear  of  his  running 
against  our  legs.  One  other  merit  he  has,  far  less  gen- 
erally acknowledged  than  it  should  be : he  is  among  our 
most  sunny  and  substantial  colorists.  Much  conventional 
color  occurs  in  his  inferior  pictures  (for  he  is  very  un- 
equal) and  some  in  all ; but  portions  are  always  to  be 
found  of  quality  so  luminous  and  pure  that  I have  found 
these  works  the  only  ones  capable  of  bearing  juxtaposi- 
tion with  Turner  and  Hunt,  who  invariably  destroy  every- 
thing else  that  comes  within  range  of  them.  His  most 
beautiful  tones  occur  in  those  drawings  in  which  there  is 
prevalent  and  powerful  warm  gray,  his  most  failing  ones 
in  those  of  sandy  red.  On  his  deficiencies  I shall  not  insist, 
because  I am  not  prepared  to  say  how  far  it  is  possible 
for  him  to  avoid  them.  We  have  never  seen  the  reconcil- 
iation of  the  peculiar  characters  he  has  obtained  with 
the  accurate  following  out  of  architectural  detail.  With 


206 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


his  present  modes  of  execution,  farther  fidelity  is  impos- 
sible, nor  has  any  other  mode  of  execution  yet  obtained 
the  same  results ; and  though  much  is  unaccomplished 
by  him  in  certain  subjects,  and  something  of  over-man- 
nerism may  be  traced  in  his  treatment  of  others,  as  es- 
pecially in  his  mode  of  expressing  the  decorative  parts 
of  Greek  or  Roman  architecture,  yet  in  his  own  peculiar 
Gothic  territory,  where  the  spirit  of  the  subject  itself  is 
somewhat  rude  and  grotesque,  his  abstract  of  decoration 
has  more  of  the  spirit  of  the  reality  than  far  more  labori- 
ous imitation.  The  spirit  of  the  Flemish  Hotel  de  Yille 
and  decorated  street  architecture  has  never  been  even  in 
the  slightest  degree  felt  or  conveyed  except  by  him,  and 
by  him,  to  my  mind,  faultlessly  and  absolutely ; and 
though  his  interpretation  of  architecture  that  contains 
more  refined  art  in  its  details  is  far  less  satisfactory,  still 
it  is  impossible,  while  walking  on  his  favorite  angle  of 
the  Piazzetta  at  Venice,  either  to  think  of  any  other  ar- 
tist than  Prout  or  not  to  think  of  him. 

Many  other  dexterous  and  agreeable  architectural  ar- 
tists we  have  of  various  degrees  of  merit,  but  of  all  of 

3°  Modern  wl]onb  it  may  be  general!}7  said,  that  they 
architectural  draw  hats,  faces,  cloaks,  and  caps  much 
pamtmg.  better  than  Prout,  but  figures  not  so  well ; 

that  they  draw  walls  and  windows  but 
not  cities,  mouldings  and  buttresses  but  not  cathedrals. 
Joseph  Nash’s  work  on  the  architecture  of  the  middle 
ages  is,  however,  valuable,  and  I suppose  that  Haghe’s 
works  may  be  depended  on  for  fidelity.  But  it  appears 
very  strange  that  a workman  capable  of  producing  the 
clever  drawings  he  has,  from  time  to  time,  sent  to  the 
New  Society  of  Painters  in  Water  Colors,  should  publish 
lithographs  so  conventional,  forced,  and  lifeless. 

It  is  not  without  hesitation,  that  I mention  a name  re- 
specting  which  the  reader  may  already  have  been  sur- 
prised at  my  silence,  that  of  G.  Cattermole.  There  are 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


207 


signs  in  his  works  of  very  peculiar  gifts,  and  perhaps 
also  of  powerful  genius ; their  deficiencies  I should  will- 
ingly attribute  to  the  advice  of  ill- judging  friends,  and 
to  the  applause  of  a public  satisfied  with  shallow  efforts, 
if  brilliant ; yet  I cannot  but  think  it  one  necessary  char- 
acteristic of  ail  true  genius  to  be  misled  by  no  such  false 
fires.  The  Antiquarian  feeling  of  Cattermole  is  pure, 
earnest,  and  natural ; and  I think  his  imagination  origi- 
nally vigorous,  certainly  his  fancy,  his  grasp  of  momen- 
tary passion  considerable,  his  sense  of  action  in  the 
human  body  vivid  and  ready.  But  no  original  talent,  how- 
ever brilliant,  can  sustain  its  energy  when  the  demands 
upon  it  are  constant,  and  all  legitimate  support  and 
food  withdrawn.  I do  not  recollect  in  any,  even  of  the 
most  important  of  Cattermole’s  works,  so  much  as  a fold 
of  drapery  studied  out  from  nature.  Violent  convention- 
alism of  light  and  shade,  sketchy  forms  continually  less 
and  less  developed,  the  walls  and  the  faces  drawn  with 
the  same  stucco  color,  alike  opaque,  and  all  the  shades 
on  flesh,  dress,  or  stone,  laid  in  with  the  same  arbitrary 
brown,  forever  tell  the  same  tale  of  a mind  wasting  its 
strength  and  substance  in  the  production  of  emptiness, 
and  seeking,  by  more  and  more  blindly  hazarded  hand- 
ling, to  conceal  the  weakness  which  the  attempt  at  finish 
would  betray. 

This  tendency  of  late,  has  been  painfully  visible  in  his 
architecture.  Some  drawings  made  several  years  ago 
for  an  annual  illustrative  of  Scott’s  works  were  for  the 
most  part  pure  and  finely  felt — (though  irrelevant  to  our 
present  subject,  a fall  of  the  Clyde  should  be  noticed, 
admirable  for  breadth  and  grace  of  foliage,  and  for  the 
bold  sweeping  of  the  water,  and  another  subject  of  which 
I regret  that  I can  only  judge  by  the  engraving ; Glen- 
dearg  at  twilight — the  monk  Eustace  chased  by  Christie 
of  the  Clint  Hill — which  I think  must  have  been  one  of 
the  sweetest  pieces  of  simple  Border  hill  feeling  ever 


208 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


painted) — and  about  that  time  his  architecture,  though 
always  conventionally  brown  in  the  shadows,  was  gener- 
ally well  drawn,  and  always  powerfully  conceived. 

Since  then,  he  has  been  tending  gradually  through  ex- 
aggeration to  caricature,  and  vainly  endeavoring  to  attain 
by  inordinate  bulk  of  decorated  parts,  that  dignity 
which  is  only  to  be  reached  by  purity  of  proportion  and 
majesty  of  line. 

It  has  pained  me  deeply,  to  see  an  artist  of  so  great 
original  power  indulging  in  childish  fantasticism  and 
§ 84.  The  evil  in  exaggeration,  and  substituting  for  the  se- 
poinrof*viewCof'  rious  and  subdued  work  of  legitimate  im- 
“o^n^ciSS-  agination,  monster  machicolations  and 
urai  subject.  colossal  cusps  and  crockets.  While  there 
is  so  much  beautiful  architecture  daily  in  process  of 
destruction  around  us,  I cannot  but  think  it  treason  to 
imagine  anything  ; at  least,  if  we  must  have  composition, 
let  the  design  of  the  artist  be  such  as  the  architect  would 
applaud.  But  it  is  surely  very  grievous,  that  while  our 
idle  artists  are  helping  their  vain  inventions  by  the  fall 
of  sponges  on  soiled  paper,  glorious  buildings  with  the 
whole  intellect  and  history  of  centuries  concentrated  in 
them,  are  suffered  to  fall  into  unrecorded  ruin.  A day 
does  not  now  pass  in  Italy  without  the  destruction  of 
some  mighty  monument;  the  streets  of  all  her  cities 
echo  to  the  hammer,  half  of  her  fair  buildings  lie  in 
separate  stones  about  the  places  of  their  foundation; 
would  not  time  be  better  spent  in  telling  us  the  truth 
about  these  perishing  remnants  of  majestic  thought, 
than  in  perpetuating  the  ill-digested  fancies  of  idle 
hours  ? It  is,  I repeat,  treason  to  the  cause  of  art  for 
any  man  to  invent,  unless  he  invents  something  better 
than  has  been  invented  before,  or  something  differing  in 
kind.  There  is  room  enough  for  invention  in  the  picto- 
rial treatment  of  what  exists.  There  is  no  more  honor- 
able exhibition  of  imaginative  power,  than  in  the  selec- 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES . 


209 


tion  of  such,  place,  choice  of  such  treatment,  introduction 
of  such  incident,  as  may  produce  a noble  picture  with- 
out deviation  from  one  line  of  the  actual  truth ; and 
such  I believe  to  be,  indeed,  in  the  end  the  most  advan- 
tageous, as  well  as  the  most  modest  direction  of  the 
invention,  for  I recollect  no  single  instance  of  architec- 
tural composition  by  any  men  except  such  as  Leonardo 
or  Veronese,  who  could  design  their  architecture  thor- 
oughly before  they  painted  it,  which  has  not  a look  of 
inanity  and  absurdity.  The  best  landscapes  and  the 
best  architectural  studies  have  been  views  ; and  I would 
have  the  artist  take  shame  to  himself  in  the  exact  degree 
in  which  he  finds  himself  obliged  in  the  production  of 
his  picture  to  lose  any,  even  of  the  smallest  parts  or 
most  trivial  hues  which  bear  a part  in  the  great  impres- 
sion made  by  the  reality.  The  difference  between  the 
drawing  of  the  architect  and  artist  * ought  never  to  be, 
as  it  now  commonly  is,  the  difference  between  lifeless 
formality  and  witless  license ; it  ought  to  be  between 
giving  the  mere  lines  and  measures  of  a building,  and 
giving  those  lines  and  measures  with  the  impression  and 
soul  of  it  besides.  All  artists  should  be  ashamed  of 
themselves  when  they  find  they  have  not  the  power  of 
being  true;  the  right  wit  of  drawing  is  like  the  right 
wit  of  conversation,  not  hyperbole,  not  violence,  not  fri- 
volity, only  well  expressed,  laconic  truth. 

Among  the  members  of  the  Academy,  we  have  at  pres- 
ent only  one  professedly  architectural  draughtsman  of 
note,  David  Roberts,  whose  reputation  § 35  works  of 
is  probably  farther  extended  on  the  conti-  Selrdfide5t°y  eand 
nent  than  that  of  any  other  of  our  artists,  grace* 
except  Landseer.  I am  not  certain,  however,  that  I 
have  any  reason  to  congratulate  either  of  my  country- 

* Indeed  there  should  be  no  such  difference  at  all.  Every  architect 
ought  to  be  an  artist ; every  very  great  artist  is  necessarily  an  archi- 
tect. 


14 


210 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


men  upon  this  their  European  estimation ; for  I think 
it  exceedingly  probable  that  in  both  instances  it  is  ex- 
clusively based  on  their  defects ; and  in  the  case  of  Mr. 
Roberts,  in  particular,  there  has  of  late  appeared  more 
ground  for  it  than  is  altogether  desirable  in  a smooth- 
ness and  over-finish  of  texture  which  bears  dangerous  fel- 
lowship with  the  work  of  our  Gallic  neighbors. 

The  fidelity  of  intention  and  honesty  of  system  of 
Roberts  have,  however,  always  been  meritorious ; his 
drawing  of  architecture  is  dependent  on  no  unintelli- 
gible lines,  or  blots,  or  substituted  types : the  main  lines 
of  the  real  design  are  always  there,  and  its  hollowness 
and  undercuttings  given  with  exquisite  feeling ; his 
sense  of  solidity  of  form  is  very  peculiar,  leading  him  to 
dwell  with  great  delight  on  the  roundings  of  edges  and 
angles ; his  execution  is  dexterous  and  delicate,  singu- 
larly so  in  oil,  and  his  sense  of  chiaroscuro  refined.  But 
he  has  never  done  himself  justice,  and  suffers  his  pict- 
ures to  fall  below  the  rank  they  should  assume,  by  the 
presence  of  several  marring  characters,  which  I shall 
name,  because  it  is  perfectly  in  his  power  to  avoid  them. 
In  looking  over  the  valuable  series  of  drawing  of  the 
Holy  Land,  which  we  owe  to  Mr.  Roberts,  we  cannot 
but  be  amazed  to  find  how  frequently  it  has  happened 
that  there  was  something  very  white  immediately  in  the 
foreground,  and  something  very  black  exactly  behind  it. 
The  same  thing  happens  perpetually  with  Mr.  Roberts’s 
pictures ; a white  column  is  always  coming  out  of  a blue 
mist,  or  a white  stone  out  of  a green  pool,  or  a white 
monument  out  of  a brown  recess,  and  the  artifice  is  not 
always  concealed  with  dexterity.  This  is  unworthy  of 
so  skilful  a composer,  and  it  has  destroyed  the  impres- 
siveness as  well  as  the  color  of  some  of  his  finest  works. 
It  shows  a poverty  of  conception,  which  appears  to  me 
to  arise  from  a deficient  habit  of  study.  It  will  be  re- 
membered that  of  the  sketches  for  this  work,  several 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


211 


times  exhibited  in  London,  every  one  was  executed  in 
the  same  manner,  and  with  about  the  same  degree  of 
completion : being  all  of  them  accurate  records  of  the 
main  architectural  lines,  the  shapes  of  the  shadows,  and 
the  remnants  of  artificial  color,  obtained,  by  means  of 
the  same  grays,  throughout,  and  of  the  same  yellow 
(a  singularly  false  and  cold  though  convenient  color) 
touched  upon  the  lights.  As  far  as  they  went,  nothing 
could  be  more  valuable  than  these  sketches,  and  the 
public,  glancing  rapidly  at  their  general  and  graceful 
effects,  could  hardly  form  anything  like  an  estimate  of 
the  endurance  and  determination  which  must  have  been 
necessary  in  such  a climate  to  obtain  records  so  patient, 
entire,  and  clear,  of  details  so  multitudinous  as  (espe- 
cially) the  hieroglyphics  of  the  Egyptian  temples ; an 
endurance  which  perhaps  only  artists  can  estimate,  and 
for  which  we  owe  a debt  of  gratitude  to  Mr.  Roberts 
most  difficult  to  discharge.  But  if  these  sketches  were 
all  that  the  artist  brought  home,  whatever  value  is  to  be 
attached  to  them  as  statements  of  fact,  they  are  alto- 
gether insufficient  for  the  producing  of  pictures.  I saw 
among  them  no  single  instance  of  a downright  study; 
of  a study  in  which  the  real  hues  and  shades  of  sky  and 
earth  had  been  honestly  realized  or  attempted ; nor  were 
there,  on  the  other  hand,  any  of  those  invaluable-blotted- 
five-minutes  works  which  record  the  unity  of  some  sin- 
gle and  magnificent  impressions.  Hence  the  pictures 
which  have  been  painted  from  these  sketches  have  been 
as  much  alike  in  their  want  of  impressiveness  as  the 
sketches  themselves,  and  have  never  borne  the  living 
aspect  of  the  Egyptian  light ; it  has  always  been  impos- 
sible to  say  whether  the  red  in  them  (not  a pleasant  one) 
was  meant  for  hot  sunshine  or  for  red  sandstone — their 
power  has  been  farther  destroyed  by  the  necessity  the 
artist  seems  to  feel  himself  under  of  eking  out  their  ef- 
fect by  points  of  bright  foreground  color,  and  thus  we 


212 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


have  been  encumbered  with  caftans,  pipes,  scymetars, 
and  black  hair,  when  all  that  we  wanted  was  a lizard,  or 
an  ibis.  It  is  perhaps  owing*  to  this  want  of  earnestness 
in  study  rather  than  to  deficiency  of  perception,  that  the 
coloring  of  this  artist  is  commonly  untrue.  Some  time 
ago  when  he  was  painting  Spanish  subjects,  his  habit 
was  to  bring  out  his  whites  in  relief  from  transparent 
bituminous  browns,  which  though  not  exactly  right  in 
color,  were  at  any  rate  warm  and  agreeable ; but  of  late 
his  color  has  become  cold,  waxy,  and  opaque,  and  in  his 
deep  shades  he  sometimes  permits  himself  the  use  of  a 
violent  black  which  is  altogether  unjustifiable.  A pict- 
ure of  Eoslin  Chapel  exhibited  in  1844,  showed  this  de- 
fect in  the  recess  to  which  the  stairs  descend,  in  an  ex- 
travagant degree ; and  another  exhibited  in  the  British 
Institution,  instead  of  showing  the  exquisite  crumbling 
and  lichenous  texture  of  the  Eoslin  stone,  was  polished 
to  as  vapid  smoothness  as  ever  French  historical  pict- 
ure. The  general  feebleness  of  the  effect  is  increased 
by  the  insertion  of  the  figures  as  violent  pieces  of  local 
color  unaffected  by  the  light  and  unblended  with  the 
hues  around  them,  and  bearing  evidence  of  having  been 
painted  from  models  or  draperies  in  the  dead  light  of  a 
room  instead  of  sunshine.  On  these  deficiencies  I should 
not  have  remarked,  but  that  by  honest  and  determined 
painting  from  and  of  nature,  it  is  perfectly  in  the  power 
of  the  artist  to  supply  them ; and  it  is  bitterly  to  be  re- 
gretted that  the  accuracy  and  elegance  of  his  work 
should  not  be  aided  by  that  genuineness  of  hue  and  ef- 
fect which  can  only  be  given  by  the  uncompromising 
effort  to  paint  not  a fine  picture  but  an  impressive  and 
known  verity. 

The  two  artists  whose  works  it  remains  for  us  to  re- 
view, are  men  who  have  presented  us  with  examples  of 
the  treatment  of  every  kind  of  subject,  and  among  the 
rest  with  portions  of  architecture  which  the  best  of 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


213 


our  exclusively  architectural  draughtsmen  could  not 
excel. 

The  frequent  references  made  to  the  works  of  Clarkson 
Stanfield  throughout  the  subsequent  pages  render  it  less 
necessary  for  me  to  speak  of  him  here  at  §36.  ciarkson 
any  length.  He  is  the  leader  of  the  Eng-  stanfield* 
lish  Realists,  and  perhaps  among  the  more  remarkable 
of  his  characteristics  is  the  look  of  common-sense  and 
rationality  which  his  compositions  will  always  bear  when 
opposed  to  any  kind  of  affectation.  He  appears  to  think 
of  no  other  artist.  What  he  has  learned,  has  been  from 
his  own  acquaintance  with  and  affection  for  the  steep 
hills  and  the  deep  sea ; and  his  modes  of  treatment  are 
alike  removed  from  sketchiness  or  incompletion,  and 
from  exaggeration  or  effort.  The  somewhat  over-prosaic 
tone  of  his  subjects  is  rather  a condescension  to  what  he 
supposes  to  be  public  feeling,  than  a sign  of  want  of 
feeling  in  himself ; for  in  some  of  his  sketches  from  nat- 
ure or  from  fancy,  I have  seen  powers  and  perceptions 
manifested  of  a far  higher  order  than  any  that  are  trace- 
able in  his  Academy  works,  powers  which  I think  him 
much  to  be  blamed  for  checking.  The  portion  of  his 
pictures  usually  most  defective  in  this  respect  is  the 
sky,  which  is  apt  to  be  cold  and  uninventive,  always 
well  drawn,  but  with  a kind  of  hesitation  in  the  clouds 
whether  it  is  to  be  fair  or  foul  weather;  they  having* 
neither  the  joyfulness  of  rest,  nor  the  majesty  of  storm. 
Their  color  is  apt  also  to  verge  on  a morbid  purple,  as 
was  eminently  the  case  in  the  large  picture  of  the  wreck 
on  the  coast  of  Holland  exhibited  in  1844,  a work  in  which 
both  his  powers  and  faults  were  prominently  manifested, 
the  picture  being  full  of  good  painting,  but  wanting  in 
its  entire  appeal.  There  was  no  feeling  of  wreck  about 
it ; and,  but  for  the  damage  about  her  bowsprit,  it  would 
have  been  impossible  for  a landsman  to  say  whether  the 
hull  was  meant  for  a wreck  or  a guardship.  Neverthe- 


2 It 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


less,  it  is  always  to  be  recollected,  that  in  subjects  of 
this  kind  it  is  probable  that  much  escapes  us  in  conse- 
quence of  our  want  of  knowledge,  and  that  to  the  eye  of 
the  seaman  much  may  be  of  interest  and  value  which  to 
us  appears  cold.  At  all  events,  this  healthy  and  rational 
regard  of  things  is  incomparably  preferable  to  the  dra- 
matic absurdities  which  weaker  artists  commit  in  mat- 
ters marine ; and  from  copper-colored  sunsets  on  green 
waves  sixty  feet  high,  with  cauliflower  breakers,  and 
ninepin  rocks ; from  drowning  on  planks,  and  starving 
on  rafts,  and  lying  naked  on  beaches,  it  is  really  re- 
freshing to  turn  to  a surge  of  Stanfield’s  true  salt,  ser- 
viceable, unsentimental  sea.  It  would  be  well,  however, 
if  he  would  sometimes  take  a higher  flight.  The  castle 
of  Ischia  gave  him  a grand  subject,  and  a little  more 
invention  in  the  sky,  a little  less  muddiness  in  the  rocks, 
and  a little  more  savageness  in  the  sea,  would  have  made 
it  an  impressive  picture ; it  just  misses  the  sublime,  yet 
is  a fine  work,  and  better  engraved  than  usual  by  the  Art 
Union. 

One  fault  we  cannot  but  venture  to  find,  even  in  our 
own  extreme  ignorance,  with  Mr.  Stanfield’s  boats ; they 
never  look  weather-beaten.  There  is  something  pecu- 
liarly precious  in  the  rusty,  dusty,  tar-trickled,  fishy, 
phosphorescent  brown  of  an  old  boat,  and  when  this  has 
just  dipped  under  a wave  and  rises  to  the  sunshine  it  is 
enough  to  drive  Giorgione  to  despair.  I have  never 
seen  any  effort  at  this  by  Stanfield;  his  boats  always 
look  new-painted  and  clean ; witness  especially  the  one 
before  the  ship  in  the  wreck  picture  above  noticed ; and 
there  is  some  such  absence  of  a right  sense  of  color  in 
other  portions  of  his  subject ; even  his  fishermen  have 
always  clean  jackets  and  unsoiled  caps,  and  his  very 
rocks  are  lichenless.  And,  by  the  way,  this  ought  to  be 
noted  respecting  modern  painters  in  general,  that  they 
have  not  a proper  sense  of  the  value  of  dirt;  cottage 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


215 


children  never  appear  but  in  fresh  got-up  caps  and 
aprons,  and  white-handed  beggars  excite  compassion  in 
unexceptionable  rags.  In  reality,  almost  all  the  colors 
of  things  associated  with  human  life  derive  something  of 
their  expression  and  value  from  the  tones  of  impurity, 
and  so  enhance  the  value  of  the  entirely  pure  tints  of 
nature  herself.  Of  Stanfield’s  rock  and  mountain  draw- 
ing enough  will  be  said  hereafter.  His  foliage  is  infe- 
rior ; his  architecture  admirably  drawn,  but  commonly 
wanting  in  color.  His  picture  of  the  Doge’s  palace  at 
Venice  was  quite  clay-cold  and  untrue.  Of  late  he  has 
shown  a marvellous  predilection  for  the  realization,  even 
to  actually  relieved  texture,  of  old  worm-eaten  wood ; we 
trust  he  will  not  allow  such  fancies  to  carry  him  too 
far. 

The  name  I have  last  to  mention  is  that  of  J.  M.  W. 
Turner.  I do  not  intend  to  speak  of  this  artist  at  present 
in  general  terms,  because  my  constant  practice  through- 
out this  work  is  to  say,  when  I speak  of  an  § 37i  J#  M>  w> 
artist  at  all,  the  very  truth  of  what  I be-  Bationai  fS?§|  il 
lieve  and  feel  respecting  him;  and  the  aU sreat painters, 
truth  of  what  I believe  and  feel  respecting  Turner  would 
appear  in  this  place,  unsupported  by  any  proof,  mere 
rhapsody.  I shall  therefore  here  confine  myself  to  a 
rapid  glance  at  the  relations  of  his  past  and  present 
works,  and  to  some  notice  of  what  he  has  failed  of  ac- 
complishing: the  greater  part  of  the  subsequent  chap- 
ters will  be  exclusively  devoted  to  the  examination  of 
the  new  fields  over  which  he  has  extended  the  range  of 
landscape  art. 

It  is  a fact  more  universally  acknowledged  than  en- 
forced or  acted  upon,  that  all  great  painters,  of  whatever 
school,  have  been  great  only  in  their  rendering  of  what 
they  had  seen  and  felt  from  early  childhood ; and  that 
the  greatest  among  them  have  been  the  most  frank  in 
acknowledging  this  their  inability  to  treat  anything 


216 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


successfully  but  that  with  which  they  had  been  famil- 
iar. The  Madonna  of  Raffaeile  was  born  on  the  Urbino 
mountains,  Ghirlandajo’s  is  a Florentine,  Bellini’s  a Ve- 
netian ; there  is  not  the  slightest  effort  on  the  part  of 
any  one  of  these  great  men  to  paint  her  as  a Jewess.  It 
is  not  the  place  here  to  insist  farther  on  a point  so  sim- 
ple and  so  universally  demonstrable.  Expression,  char- 
acter, types  of  countenance,  costume,  color,  and  accesso- 
ries are  with  all  great  painters  whatsoever  those  of  their 
native  land,  and  that  frankly  and  entirely,  without  the 
slightest  attempt  at  modification ; and  I assert  fearlessly 
that  it  is  impossible  that  it  should  ever  be  otherwise, 
and  that  no  man  ever  painted  or  ever  will  paint  well 
anything  but  what  he  has  early  and  long  seen,  early  and 
long  felt,  and  early  and  long  loved.  How  far  it  is  pos- 
sible for  the  mind  of  one  nation  or  generation  to  be 
healthily  modified  and  taught  by  the  work  of  another,  I 
presume  not  to  determine  ; but  it  depends  upon  whether 
the  energy  of  the  mind  which  receives  the  instruction  be 
sufficient,  while  it  takes  out  of  what  it  feeds  upon  that 
which  is  universal  and  common  to  all  nature,  to  resist 
all  warping  from  national  or  temporary  peculiarities. 
Nino  Pisano  got  nothing  but  good,  the  modern  French 
nothing  but  evil,  from  the  study  of  the  antique ; but 
Nino  Pisano  had  a God  and  a character.  All  artists  who 
have  attempted  to  assume,  or  in  their  weakness  have 
been  affected  by,  the  national  peculiarities  of  other  times 
and  countries,  have  instantly,  whatever  their  original 
power,  fallen  to  third-rate  rank,  or  fallen  altogether,  and 
have  invariably  lost  their  birthright  and  blessing,  lost 
their  power  over  the  human  heart,  lost  all  capability 
of  teaching  or  benefiting  others.  Compare  the  hybrid 
classification  of  Wilson  with  the  rich  English  purity  of 
Gainsborough ; compare  the  recent  exhibition  of  middle- 
age  cartoons  for  the  Houses  of  Parliament  with  the 
works  of  Hogarth  ; compare  the  sickly  modern  German 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES . 


217 


imitations  of  the  great  Italians  with  Albert  Durer  and 
Holbein ; compare  the  vile  classicality  of  Canova  and  the 
modern  Italians  with  Mino  da  Eiesole,  Luca  della  Eob- 
bia,  and  Andrea  del  Verrocchio.  The  manner  of  Mcolo 
Poussin  is  said  to  be  Greek— it  may  be  so ; this  only  I 
know,  that  it  is  heartless  and  profitless.  The  severity  of 
the  rule,  however,  extends  not  in  full  force  to  the  nation- 
ality, but  only  to  the  visibility  of  things ; for  it  is  very 
possible  for  an  artist  of  powerful  mind  to  throw  himself 
well  into  the  feeling  of  foreign  nations  of  his  own  time. 
Thus  John  Lewis  has  been  eminently  successful  in  his 
seizing  of  Spanish  character.  Yet  it  may  be  doubted 
if  the  seizure  be  such  as  Spaniards  themselves  would 
acknowledge ; it  is  probably  of  the  habits  of  the  people 
more  than  their  hearts;  continued  efforts  of  this  kind, 
especially  if  their  subjects  be  varied,  assuredly  end  in 
failure ; Lewis,  who  seemed  so  eminently  penetrative  in 
Spain,  sent  nothing  from  Italy  but  complexions  and  cos- 
tumes, and  I expect  no  good  from  his  stay  in  Egypt. 
English  artists  are  usually  entirely  ruined  by  residence 
in  Italy,  but  for  this  there  are  collateral  causes  which  it 
is  not  here  the  place  to  examine.  Be  this  as  it  may,  and 
whatever  success  may  be  attained  in  pictures  of  slight 
and  unpretending  aim,  of  genre,  as  they  are  called,  in  the 
rendering  of  foreign  character,  of  this  I am  certain,  that 
whatever  is  to  be  truly  great  and  affecting  must  have  on 
it  the  strong  stamp  of  the  native  land ; not  a law  this, 
but  a necessity,  from  the  intense  hold  on  their  country 
of  the  affections  of  all  truly  great  men ; all  classicality, 
all  middle-age  patent  reviving,  is  utterly  vain  and  ab- 
surd ; if  we  are  now  to  do  anything  great,  good,  awful, 
religious,  it  must  be  got  out  of  our  own  little  island, 
and  out  of  this  year  1846,  railroads  and  all : if  a British 
painter,  I say  this  in  earnest  seriousness,  cannot  make 
historical  characters  out  of  the  British  House  of  Peers, 
he  cannot  paint  history ; and  if  he  cannot  make  a Ma- 


218 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


donna  of  a British  girl  of  the  nineteenth  century,  he 
cannot  paint  one  at  all. 

The  rule,  of  course,  holds  in  landscape ; yet  so  far  less 
authoritatively,  that  the  material  nature  of  all  countries 
and  times  is  in  many  points  actually,  and 

§ 38.  Influence  . ...  • • i J V * , 

of  this  feeling  on  m all,  m principle,  the  same ; so  that  feel- 

Landscape  sub-  ings  educated  in  Cumberland,  may  find 
their  food  in  Switzerland,  and  impressions 
first  received  among  the  rocks  of  Cornwall,  be  recalled 
upon  the  precipices  of  Genoa.  Add  to  this  actual  same- 
ness, the  power  of  every  great  mind  to  possess  itself  of 
the  spirit  of  things  once  presented  to  it,  and  it  is  evident, 
that  little  limitation  can  be  set  to  the  landscape  painter 
as  to  the  choice  of  his  field ; and  that  the  law  of  nation- 
ality will  hold  with  him  only  so  far  as  a certain  joyfulness 
and  completion  will  be  by  preference  found  in  those  parts 
of  his  subject  which  remind  him  of  his  own  land.  But 
if  he  attempt  to  impress  on  his  landscapes  any  other 
spirit  than  that  he  has  felt,  and  to  make  them  landscapes 
of  other  times,  it  is  all  over  with  him,  at  least,  in  the  de- 
gree in  which  such  reflected  moonshine  takes  place  of 
the  genuine  light  of  the  present  day. 

The  reader  will  at  once  perceive  how  much  trouble  this 
simple  principle  will  save  both  the  painter  and  the  critic ; 
it  at  once  sets  aside  the  whole  school  of  common  com- 
position, and  exonerates  us  from  the  labor  of  minutely 
examining  any  landscape  which  has  nymphs  or  philoso- 
phers in  it. 

It  is  hardly  necessary  for  us  to  illustrate  this  principle 
by  any  reference  to  the  works  of  early  landscape  paint- 
ers, as  I suppose  it  is  universally  acknowledged  with 
respect  to  them ; Titian  being  the  most  remarkable  in- 
stance of  the  influence  of  the  native  air  on  a strong  mind, 
and  Claude,  of  that  of  the  classical  poison  on  a weak  one ; 
but  it  is  very  necessary  to  keep  it  in  mind  in  reviewing 
the  works  of  our  great  modern  landscape  painter. 


TEE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


219 


I do  not  know  in  what  district  of  England  Turner  first 
or  longest  studied,  but  the  scenery  whose  influence  I 
can  trace  most  definitely  throughout  his  „ 

, . i i 7 1 § 39.  Its  peculiar 

works,  varied  as  they  are,  is  that  or  York-  manifestation  in 
7 # Turner. 

shire.  Of  all  his  drawings,  I think,  those 
of  the  Yorkshire  series  have  the  most  heart  in  them,  the 
most  affectionate,  simple,  unwearied,  serious  finishing  of 
truth.  There  is  in  them  little  seeking  after  effect,  but  a 
strong  love  of  place,  little  exhibition  of  the  artist’s  own 
powers  or  peculiarities,  but  intense  appreciation  of  the 
smallest  local  minutiae.  These  drawings  have  unfortun- 
ately changed  hands  frequently,  and  have  been  abused 
and  ill-treated  by  picture  dealers  and  cleaners;  the 
greater  number  of  them  are  now  mere  wrecks.  I name 
them  not  as  instances,  but  as  proofs  of  the  artist’s  study 
in  this  district ; for  the  affection  to  which  they  owe  their 
excellence,  must  have  been  grounded  long  years  before. 
It  is  to  be  traced,  not  only  in  these  drawings  of  the 
places  themselves,  but  in  the  peculiar  love  of  the  painter 
for  rounded  forms  of  hills ; not  but  that  he  is  right  in 
this  on  general  principles,  for  I doubt  not,  that,  with  his 
peculiar  feeling  for  beauty  of  line,  his  hills  would  have 
been  rounded  still,  even  if  he  had  studied  first  among 
the  peaks  of  Cadore ; but  rounded  to  the  same  extent  and 
with  the  same  delight  in  their  roundness,  they  would  not 
have  been.  It  is,  I believe,  to  those  broad  wooded  steeps 
and  swells  of  the  Yorkshire  downs  that  we  in  part  owre 
the  singular  massiveness  that  prevails  in  Turner’s  moun- 
tain drawing,  and  gives  it  one  of  its  chief  elements  of 
grandeur.  Let  the  reader  open  the  Liber  Studiorum, 
and  compare  the  painter’s  enjoyment  of  the  lines  in  the 
Ben  Arthur,  with  his  comparative  uncomfortableness 
among  those  of  the  aiguilles  about  the  Mer  de  Glace. 
Great  as  he  is,  those  peaks  would  have  been  touched  very 
differently  by  a Savoyard  as  great  as  he. 

I am  in  the  habit  of  looking  to  the  Yorkshire  draw- 


220 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


ings,  as  indicating  one  of  the  culminating  points  in 
Turner's  career.  In  these  he  attained  the  highest  degree 
of  what  he  had  up  to  that  time  attempted,  namely,  finish 
and  quantity  of  form  united  with  expression  of  atmos- 
phere, and  light  without  color.  His  early  drawings  are 
singularly  instructive  in  this  definiteness  and  simplicity 
of  aim.  No  complicated  or  brilliant  color  is  ever  thought 
of  in  them ; they  are  little  more  than  exquisite  studies 
in  light  and  shade,  very  green  blues  being  used  for  the 
shadows,  and  golden  browns  for  the  lights.  The  diffi- 
culty and  treachery  of  color  being  thus  avoided,  the  artist 
was  able  to  bend  his  whole  mind  upon  the  drawing,  and 
thus  to  attain  such  decision,  delicacy,  and  completeness 
as  have  never  in  anywise  been  equalled,  and  as  might 
serve  him  for  a secure  foundation  in  all  after  experiments. 
Of  the  quantity  and  precision  of  his  details,  the  draw- 
ings made  for  Hakewill’s  Italy  are  singular  examples. 
The  most  perfect  gem  in  execution  is  a little  bit  on  the 
Rhine,  with  reeds  in  the  foreground,  in  the  possession  of 
B.  G.  Windus,  Esq.,  of  Tottenham;  but  the  Yorkshire 
drawings  seem  to  be  on  the  whole  the  most  noble  repre- 
sentatives of  his  art  at  this  period. 

About  the  time  of  their  production,  the  artist  seems  to 
have  felt  that  he  had  done  either  all  that  could  be  done, 
or  all  that  was  necessary,  in  that  manner,  and  began  to 
reach  after  something  beyond  it.  The  element  of  color 
begins  to  mingle  with  his  work,  and  in  the  first  efforts  to 
reconcile  his  intense  feeling  for  it  with  his  careful  form, 
several  anomalies  begin  to  be  visible,  and  some  unfortu- 
nate or  uninteresting  works  necessarily  belong  to  the 
period.  The  England  drawings,  which  are  very  charac- 
teristic of  it,  are  exceedingly  unequal, — some,  as  the 
Oakhampton,  Kilgarren,  Alnwick,  and  Llanthony,  being 
among  his  finest  works;  others,  as  the  Windsor  from 
Eton,  the  Eton  College,  and  the  Bedford,  showing  coarse- 
ness and  conventionality. 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


221 


I do  not  know  at  what  time  the  painter  first  went 
abroad,  but  among  the  earliest  of  the  series  of  the  Liber 
Studiorum  (dates  1808,  1809)  occur  the  § 40  The  domes_ 
magnificent  Mont  St.  Gothard,  and  little  SLibiecstSu(S- 
Devil’s  Bridge.  Now  it  is  remarkable  that  orum- 
after  his  acquaintance  with  this  scenery,  so  congenial  in 
almost  all  respects  with  the  energy  of  his  mind,  and  sup- 
plying him  with  materials  of  which  in  these  two  subjects, 
aiid  in  the  Chartreuse,  and  several  others  afterwards,  he 
showed  both  his  entire  appreciation  and  command,  the 
proportion  of  English  to  foreign  subjects  should  in  the 
rest  of  the  work  be  more  than  two  to  one ; and  that  those 
English  subjects  should  be — many  of  them — of  a kind 
peculiarly  simple,  and  of  every-day  occurrence,  such  as 
the  Pembury  Mill,  the  Farm  Yard  Composition  with  the 
White  Horse,  that  with  the  Cocks  and  Pigs,  Hedging 
and  Ditching,  Watercress  Gatherers  (scene  at  Twicken- 
ham,) and  the  beautiful  and  solemn  rustic  subject  called 
a Watermill;  and  that  the  architectural  subjects  instead 
of  being  taken,  as  might  have  been  expected  of  an  artist 
so  fond  of  treating  effects  of  extended  space,  from  some 
of  the  enormous  continental  masses,  are  almost  exclu- 
sively British;  Bivaulx,  Holy  Island,  Dumblain,  Dun- 
stanborough,  Chepstow,  St.  Catherine’s,  Greenwich  Hos- 
pital, an  English  Parish  Church,  a Saxon  Buin,  and  an 
exquisite  Beminiscence  of  the  English  Lowland  Castle 
in  the  pastoral,  with  the  brook,  wooden  bridge,  and  wild 
duck,  to  all  of  which  we  have  nothing  foreign  to  oppose 
but  three  slight,  ill  considered,  and  unsatisfactory  sub- 
jects, from  Basle,  Lauffenbourg,  and  another  Swiss  vil- 
lage ; and,  further,  not  only  is  the  preponderance  of  sub- 
ject British,  but  of  affection  also ; for  it  is  strange  with 
what  fulness  and  completion  the  home  subjects  are 
treated  in  comparison  with  the  greater  part  of  the  foreign 
ones.  Compare  the  figures  and  sheep  in  the  Hedging 
and  Ditching,  and  the  East  gate,  Winchelsea,  together 


222 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


with  the  near  leafage,  with  the  puzzled  foreground  and 
inappropriate  figures  of  the  Lake  of  Thun ; or  the  cattle 
and  road  of  the  St.  Catherine’s  Hill,  with  the  foreground 
of  the  Bonneville ; or  the  exquisite  figure  with  the  sheaf 
of  corn,  in  the  Watermill,  with  the  vintages  of  the  Gren- 
oble subject. 

In  his  foliage  the  same  predilections  are  remarkable. 
Reminiscences  of  English  willows  by  the  brooks,  and 
English  forest  glades  mingle  even  with  the  heroic  foli- 
age of  the  iEsacus  and  Hesperie,  and  the  Cephalus ; into 
the  pine,  whether  of  Switzerland  or  the  glorious  Stone, 
he  cannot  enter,  or  enters  at  his  peril,  like  Ariel.  Those 
of  the  Valley  of  Chamounix  are  fine  masses,  better  pines 
than  other  people’s,  but  not  a bit  like  pines  for  all  that ; 
he  feels  his  weakness,  and  tears  them  off  the  distant 
mountains  with  the  mercilessness  of  an  avalanche.  The 
Stone  pines  of  the  two  Italian  compositions  are  fine  in 
their  arrangement,  but  they  are  very  pitiful  pines ; the 
glory  of  the  Alpine  rose  he  never  touches ; he  munches 
chestnuts  with  no  relish ; never  has  learned  to  like  olives ; 
and,  by  the  vine,  we  find  him  in  the  foreground  of  the 
Grenoble  Alps  laid  utterly  and  incontrovertibly  on  his 
back. 

I adduce  these  evidences  of  Turner’s  nationality  (and 
innumerable  others  might  be  given  if  need  were)  not  as 
proofs  of  weakness  but  of  power ; not  so  much  as  testify- 
ing want  of  perception  in  foreign  lands,  as  strong  hold  on 
his  own  will ; for  I am  sure  that  no  artist  who  has  not 
this  hold  upon  his  own  will  ever  get  good  out  of  any 
other.  Keeping  this  principle  in  mind,  it  is  instructive 
to  observe  the  depth  and  solemnity  which  Turner’s 
feeling  received  from  the  scenery  of  the  continent,  the 
keen  appreciation  up  to  a certain  point  of  all  that  is  lo- 
cally characteristic,  and  the  ready  seizure  for  future  use 
of  all  valuable  material. 

Of  all  foreign  countries  he  has  most  entirely  entered 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES . 


223 


into  the  spirit  of  France ; partly  because  here  he  found 
more  fellowship  of  scene  with  his  own  England,  partly 
because  an  amount  of  thought  which  will  Tmuafe  aint 
miss  of  Italy  or  Switzerland,  will  fathom  mg  o^mncKnd 

^ ,11  ,i  . . . Swiss  landscape. 

France;  partly  because  there  is  m the  The  latter  aefi- 
French  foliage  and  forms  of  ground,  much  C1 
that  is  especially  congenial  with  his  own  peculiar  choice 
of  form.  To  what  cause  it  is  owing  I cannot  tell,  nor  is 
it 'generally  allowed  or  felt;  but  of  the  fact  I am  certain, 
that  for  grace  of  stem  and  perfection  of  form  in  their 
transparent  foliage,  the  French  trees  are  altogether  un- 
matched ; and  their  modes  of  grouping  and  massing  are 
so  perfectly  and  constantly  beautiful  that  I think  of  all 
countries  for  educating  an  artist  to  the  perception  of 
grace,  France  bears  the  bell ; and  that  not  romantic  nor 
mountainous  France,  not  the  Yosges,  nor  Auvergne,  nor 
Provence,  but  lowland  France,  Picardy  and  Normandy, 
the  valleys  of  the  Loire  and  Seine,  and  even  the  district, 
so  thoughtlessly  and  mindlessly  abused  by  English  trav- 
ellers, as  uninteresting,  traversed  between  Calais  and 
Dijon ; of  which  there  is  not  a single  valley  but  is  full  of 
the  most  lovely  pictures,  nor  a mile  from  which  the  artist 
may  not  receive  instruction;  the  district  immediately 
about  Sens  being  perhaps  the  most  valuable  from  the 
grandeur  of  its  lines  of  poplars  and  the  unimaginable 
finish  and  beauty  of  the  tree  forms  in  the  two  great  ave^ 
nues  without  the  walls.  Of  this  kind  of  beauty  Turner 
was  the  first  to  take  cognizance,  and  he  still  remains  the 
only,  but  in  himself  the  sufficient  painter  of  French  land- 
scape. One  of  the  most  beautiful  examples  is  the  draw- 
ing of  trees  engraved  for  the  Keepsake,  now  in  the  pos- 
session  of  B.  Gr.  Windus,  Esq. ; the  drawings  made  to  illus- 
trate the  scenery  of  the  Rivers  of  France  supply  in- 
stances of  the  most  varied  character. 

The  artist  appears,  until  very  lately,  rather  to  have 
taken  from  Switzerland  thoughts  and  general  concept 


224 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


tions  of  size  and  of  grand  form  and  effect  to  be  used  in  liis 
after  compositions,  than  to  have  attempted  the  seizing 
of  its  actual  character.  This  was  beforehand  to  be  ex- 
pected from  the  utter  physical  impossibility  of  rendering 
certain  effects  of  Swiss  scenery,  and  the  monotony  and 
unmanageableness  of  others.  The  Valley  of  Chamounix 
in  the  collection  of  Walter  Fawkes,  Esq.,  I have  never 
seen ; it  has  a high  reputation ; the  Hannibal  Passing 
the  Alps  in  its  present  state  exhibits  nothing  but  a heavy 
shower  and  a crowd  of  people  getting  wet ; another  pict- 
ure in  the  artist’s  gallery  of  a land-fall  is  most  masterly 
and  interesting,  but  more  daring  than  agreeable.  The 
Snow-storm,  avalanche,  and  inundation,  is  one  of  his 
mightiest  works,  but  the  amount  of  mountain  drawing 
in  it  is  less  than  of  cloud  and  effect ; the  subjects  in  the 
Liber  Studiorum  are  on  the  whole  the  most  intensely 
felt,  and  next  to  them  the  vignettes  to  Rogers’s  Poems 
and  Italy.  Of  some  recent  drawings  of  Swiss  subject  I 
shall  speak  presently. 

The  effect  of  Italy  upon  his  mind  is  very  puzzling. 
On  the  one  hand,  it  gave  him  the  solemnity  and  power 
§42  His  render-  which  are  manifested  in  the  historical 
iefe?fstmk?sCsuc-  compositions  of  the  Liber  Studiorum, 
compositions ^ ikjw  more  especially  the  Rizpah,  the  Cephalus, 
failing.  the  scene  from  the  Fairy  Queen,  and  the 

iEsacus  and  Hesperie : on  the  other,  he  seems  never  to 
have  entered  thoroughly  into  the  spirit  of  Italy,  and  the 
materials  he  obtained  there  were  afterward  but  awkward- 
ly introduced  in  his  large  compositions. 

Of  these  there  are  very  few  at  all  worthy  of  him ; none 
but  the  Liber  Studiorum  subjects  are  thoroughly  great, 
and  these  are  great  because  there  is  in  them  the  serious- 
ness without  the  materials  of  other  countries  and  times. 
There  is  nothing  particularly  indicative  of  Palestine  in 
the  Barley  Harvest  of  the  Rizpah,  nor  in  those  round 
and  awful  trees ; only  the  solemnity  of  the  south  in  the 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES . 


225 


lifting*  of  the  near  burning  moon.  The  rocks  of  the  Ja- 
son may  be  seen  in  any  quarry  of  Warwickshire  sand- 
stone. Jason  himself  has  not  a bit  of  Greek  about  him 
— he  is  a simple  warrior  of  no  period  in  particular,  nay,  I 
think  there  is  something  of  the  nineteenth  century  about 
his  legs.  When  local  character  of  this  classical  kind  is 
attempted,  the  painter  is  visibly  cramped : awkward  re- 
semblances to  Claude  testify  the  want  of  his  usual  force- 
ful originality  : in  the  tenth  Plague  of  Egypt,  he  makes 
us  think  of  Belzoni  rather  than  of  Moses ; the  fifth  is  a 
total  failure,  the  pyramids  look  like  brick-kilns,  and  the 
fire  running  along  the  ground  bears  brotherly  resem- 
blance to  the  burning  of  manure.  The  realization  of  the 
tenth  plague  now  in  his  gallery  is  finer  than  the  study, 
but  still  uninteresting;  and  of  the  large  compositions 
which  have  much  of  Italy  in  them,  the  greater  part  are 
overwhelmed  with  quantity  and  deficient  in  emotion. 
The  Crossing  the  Brook  is  one  of  the  best  of  these  hy- 
brid pictures;  incomparable  in  its  tree-drawing,  it  yet 
leaves  us  doubtful  where  we  are  to  look  and  what  we  are 
to  feel ; it  is  northern  in  its  color,  southern  in  its  foliage, 
Italy  in  its  details,  and  England  in  its  sensations,  with- 
out the  grandeur  of  the  one,  or  the  healthiness  of  the 
other. 

The  two  Cartilages  are  mere  rationalizations  of  Claude, 
one  of  them  excessively  bad  in  color,  the  other  a grand 
thought,  and  yet  one  of  the  kind  which  does  no  one  any 
good,  because  everything  in  it  is  reciprocally  sacrificed ; 
the  foliage  is  sacrificed  to  the  architecture,  the  architect- 
ure to  the  water,  the  water  is  neither  sea,  nor  river,  nor 
lake,  nor  brook,  nor  canal,  and  savors  of  Begent’s  Park ; 
the  foreground  is  uncomfortable  ground, — let  on  build- 
ing leases.  So  the  Caligula’s  Bridge,  Temple  of  Jupiter, 
Departure  of  Begulus,  Ancient  Italy,  Cicero’s  Villa,  and 
such  others,  come  they  from  whose  hand  they  may,  I 
class  under  the  general  head  of  “ nonsense  pictures.” 
15 


226 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


There  never  can  be  any  wholesome  feeling  developed  in 
these  preposterous  accumulations,  and  where  the  artist’s 
feeling  fails,  his  art  follows ; so  that  the  worst  possible 
examples  of  Turner’s  color  are  found  in  pictures  of  this 
class ; in  one  or  two  instances  he  has  broken  through  the 
conventional  rules,  and  then  is  always  fine,  as  in  the 
Hero  and  Leander ; but  in  general  the  picture  rises  in 
value  as  it  approaches  to  a view,  as  the  Fountain  of  Fal- 
lacy, a piece  of  rich  northern  Italy,  with  some  fairy 
waterworks;  this  picture  was  unrivalled  in  color  once, 
but  is  now  a mere  wreck.  So  the  Bape  of  Proserpine, 
though  it  is  singular  that  in  his  Academy  pictures  even 
his  simplicity  fails  of  reaching  ideality ; in  this  picture 
of  Proserpine  the  nature  is  not  the  grand  nature  of  all 
time,  it  is  indubitably  modern,*  and  we  are  perfectly 
electrified  at  anybody’s  being  carried  away  in  the  corner 
except  by  people  with  spiky  hats  and  carabines.  This  is 
traceable  to  several  causes;  partly  to  the  want  of  any 
grand  specific  form,  partly  to  the  too  evident  middle-age 
character  of  the  ruins  crowning  the  hills,  and  to  a multi- 
plicity of  minor  causes  which  we  cannot  at  present  enter 
into. 

Neither  in  his  actual  views  of  Italy  has  Turner  ever 
caught  her  true  spirit,  except  in  the  little  vignettes  to 
§ 43.  His  views  of  Bogers’s  Poems.  The  Villa  of  Galileo,  the 
briilimcTam?  rl  nameless  composition  with  stone  pines,  the 
dundant  quantity.  seVeral  villa  moonlights,  and  the  convent 

compositions  in  the  Voyage  of  Columbus,  are  altogether 
exquisite ; but  this  is  owing  chiefly  to  their  simplicity 
and  perhaps  in  some  measure  to  their  smallness  of  size. 

* This  passage  seems  at  variance  with  what  has  been  said  of  the  ne- 
cessity of  painting  present  times  and  objects.  It  is  not  so.  A great 
painter  makes  out  of  that  which  he  finds  before  him  something  which 
is  independent  of  all  time.  He  can  only  do  this  out  of  the  materials 
ready  to  his  hand,  but  that  which  he  builds  has  the  dignity  of  dateless 
age.  A little  painter  is  annihilated  by  an  anachronism,  and  is  con- 
ventionally antique,  and  involuntarily  modern. 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


227 


None  of  his  large  pictures  at  all  equal  them  ; the  Bay  of 
Baiae  is  encumbered  with  material,  it  contains  ten  times 
as  much  as  is  necessary  to  a good  picture,  and  yet  is  so 
crude  in  color  as  to  look  unfinished.  The  Palestrina  is 
full  of  raw  white,  and  has  a look  of  Hampton  Court 
about  its  long  avenue ; the  modern  Italy  is  purely  Eng- 
lish in  its  near  foliage ; it  is  composed  from  Tivoli  ma- 
terial enriched  and  arranged  most  dexterously,  but  it  has 
the  look  of  a rich  arrangement,  and  not  the  virtue  of  the 
real  thing.  The  early  Tivoli,  a large  drawing  taken  from 
below  the  falls,  was  as  little  true,  and  still  less  fortunate, 
the  trees  there  being  altogether  affected  and  artificial. 
The  Florence  engraved  in  the  Keepsake  is  a glorious 
drawing,  as  far  as  regards  the  passage  with  the  bridge 
and  sunlight  on  the  Arno,  the  Cascine  foliage,  and  dis- 
tant plain,  and  the  towers  of  the  fortress  on  the  left ; but 
the  details  of  the  duomo  and  the  city  are  entirely  missed, 
and  with  them  the  majesty  of  the  whole  scene.  The 
vines  and  melons  of  the  foreground  are  disorderly,  and 
its  cypresses  conventional;  in  fact,  I recollect  no  in- 
stance of  Turner’s  drawing  a cypress  except  in  general 
terms. 

The  chief  reason  of  these  failures  I imagine  to  be  the 
effort  of  the  artist  to  put  joyousness  and  brilliancy  of 
effect  upon  scenes  eminently  pensive,  to  substitute  radi- 
ance for  serenity  of  light,  and  to  force  the  freedom  and 
breadth  of  line  which  he  learned  to  love  on  English 
downs  and  Highland  moors,  out  of  a country  dotted 
by  campaniles  and  square  convents,  bristled  with  cy- 
presses, partitioned  by  walls,  and  gone  up  and  down  by 
steps. 

In  one  of  the  cities  of  Italy  he  had  no  such  difficulties 
to  encounter.  At  Venice  he  found  freedom  of  sj)ace, 
brilliancy  of  light,  variety  of  color,  massy  simplicity  of 
general  form ; and  to  Venice  we  owe  many  of  the  motives 
in  which  his  highest  powers  of  color  have  been  dis- 


228 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


played  after  tliat  change  in  his  system  of  which  we  must 
now  take  note. 

Among  the  earlier  paintings  of  Turner,  the  culminat- 
ing period,  marked  by  the  Yorkshire  series  in  his  draw- 
§ 44.  Changes  in-  ings,  is  distinguished  by  great  solemnity 
in°dthed  received  an(^  simplicity  of  subject,  prevalent  gloom 
system  of  art.  in  light  and  shade,  and  brown  in  the  hue, 

the  drawing  manly  but  careful,  the  minutiae  sometimes 
exquisitely  delicate.  All  the  finest  works  of  this  period 
are,  I believe,  without  exception,  views,  or  quiet  single 
thoughts.  The  Calder  Bridge,  belonging  to  E.  Bicknell, 
Esq.,  is  a most  pure  and  beautiful  example.  The  Ivy 
Bridge,  I imagine  to  be  later,  but  its  rock  foreground  is 
altogether  unrivalled  and  remarkable  for  its  delicacy  of 
detail ; a butterfly  is  seen  settled  on  one  of  the  large 
brown  stones  in  the  midst  of  the  torrent.  Two  paintings 
of  Bonneville,  in  Savoy,  one  in  the  possession  of  Abel 
Allnutt,  Esq.,  the  other,  and,  I think,  the  finest,  in  a col- 
lection at  Birmingham,  show  more  variety  of  color  than 
is  usual  with  him  at  the  period,  and  are  in  every  respect 
magnificent  examples.  Pictures  of  this  class  are  of  pe- 
culiar value,  for  the  larger  compositions  of  the  same 
period  are  all  poor  in  color,  and  most  of  them  much 
damaged,  but  the  smaller  works  have  been  far  finer  orig- 
inally, and  their  color  seems  secure.  There  is  nothing 
in  the  range  of  landscape  art  equal  to  them  in  their  way, 
but  the  full  character  and  capacity  of  the  painter  is  not 
in  them.  Grand  as  they  are  in  their  sobriety,  they  still 
leave  much  to  be  desired ; there  is  great  heaviness  in 
their  shadows,  the  material  is  never  thoroughly  van- 
quished, (though  this  partly  for  a very  noble  reason, 
that  the  painter  is  always  thinking  of  and  referring  to 
nature,  and  indulges  in  no  artistical  conventionalities,) 
and  sometimes  the  handling  appears  feeble.  In  warmth, 
lightness,  and  transparency  they  have  no  chance  against 
Gainsborough ; in  clear  skies  and  air  tone  they  are  alike 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


229 


unfortunate  when  they  provoke  comparison  with  Claude ; 
and  in  force  and  solemnity  they  can  in  nowise  stand 
with  the  landscape  of  the  Venetians. 

The  painter  evidently  felt  that  he  had  farther  powers, 
and  pressed  forward  into  the  field  where  alone  they 
could  be  brought  into  play.  It  was  impossible  for  him, 
with  all  his  keen  and  long-disciplined  perceptions,  not 
to  feel  that  the  real  color  of  nature  had  never  been 
attempted  by  any  school ; and  that  though  conventional 
representations  had  been  given  by  the  Venetians  of  sun- 
light and  twilight,  by  invariably  rendering  the  whites 
golden  and  the  blues  green,  yet  of  the  actual,  joyous, 
pure,  roseate  hues  of  the  external  world  no  record  had 
even  been  given.  He  saw  also  that  the  finish  and  spe- 
cific grandeur  of  nature  had  been  given,  but  her  fulness, 
space,  and  mystery  never;  and  he  saw  that  the  great 
landscape  painters  had  always  sunk  the  lower  middle 
tints  of  nature  in  extreme  shade,  bringing  the  entire 
melody  of  color  as  many  degrees  down  as  their  possible 
light  was  inferior  to  nature’s ; and  that  in  so  doing  a 
gloomy  principle  had  influenced  them  even  in  their 
choice  of  subject. 

For  the  conventional  color  he  substituted  a pure 
straightforward  rendering  of  fact,  as  far  as  was  in  his 
power ; and  that  not  of  such  fact  as  had  been  before  even 
suggested,  but  of  all  that  is  most  brilliant,  beautiful,  and 
inimitable ; he  went  to  the  cataract  for  its  iris,  to  the 
conflagration  for  its  flames,  asked  of  the  sea  its  intensest 
azure,  of  the  sky  its  clearest  gold.  For  the  limited  space 
and  defined  forms  of  elder  landscape,  he  substituted  the 
quantity  and  the  mystery  of  the  vastest  scenes  of  earth ; 
and  for  the  subdued  chiaroscuro  he  substituted  first  a 
balanced  diminution  of  oppositions  throughout  the  scale, 
and  afterward,  in  one  or  two  instances,  attempted  the  re- 
verse of  the  old  principle,  taking  the  lowest  portion  of 
the  scale  truly,  and  merging  the  upper  part  in  high  light. 


230 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


Innovations  so  daring  and  so  various  could  not  be  in- 
troduced without  corresponding  peril;  the  difficulties 
§ 45.  Difficulties  tilat  lay  in  his  way  were  more  than  any 
nerMs  1 ResuSant  human  intellect  could  altogether  surmount, 
deficiencies.  In  pis  time  there  has  been  no  one  system 
of  color  generally  approved ; every  artist  has  his  own 
method  and  his  own  vehicle;  how  to  do  what  Gains- 
borough did,  we  know  not ; much  less  what  Titian ; to 
invent  a new  system  of  color  can  hardly  be  expected  of 
those  who  cannot  recover  the  old.  To  obtain  perfectly 
satisfactory  results  in  color  under  the  new  conditions 
introduced  by  Turner,  would  at  least  have  required  the 
exertion  of  all  his  energies  in  that  sole  direction.  But 
color  has  always  been  only  his  second  object.  The 
effects  of  space  and  form,  in  which  he  delights,  often 
require  the  employment  of  means  and  method  totally  at 
variance  with  those  necessary  for  the  obtaining  of  pure 
color.  It  is  physically  impossible,  for  instance,  rightly 
to  draw  certain  forms  of  the  upper  clouds  with  the  brush ; 
nothing  will  do  it  but  the  pallet-knife  with  loaded  white 
after  the  blue  ground  is  prepared.  Now  it  is  impossible 
that  a cloud  so  drawn,  however  glazed  afterward,  should 
have  the  virtue  of  a thin  warm  tint  of  Titian’s,  showing 
the  canvas  throughout.  So  it  happens  continually.  Add 
to  these  difficulties,  those  of  the  peculiar  subjects  at- 
tempted, and  to  these  again,  all  that  belong  to  the  al- 
tered system  of  chiaroscuro,  and  it  is  evident  that  we 
must  not  be  surprised  at  finding  many  deficiencies  or 
faults  in  such  works,  especially  in  the  earlier  of  them, 
nor  even  suffer  ourselves  to  be  withdrawn  by  the  pur- 
suit of  what  seems  censurable  from  our  devotion  to  what 
is  mighty. 

Notwithstanding,  in  some  chosen  examples  of  pictures 
of  this  kind,  I will  name  three : Juliet  and  her  Nurse ; 
the  old  Temeraire,  and  the  Slave  Ship : I do  not  admit 
that  there  are  at  the  time  of  their  first  appearing  on  the 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES . 


231 


walls  of  the  Boyal  Academy,  any  demonstrably  avoidable 
faults.  I do  not  deny  that  there  may  be,  nay,  that  it  is 
likely  there  are  ; but  there  is  no  living  artist  in  Europe 
whose  judgment  might  safely  be  taken  on  the  subject,  or 
who  could  without  arrogance  affirm  of  any  part  of  such  a 
picture,  that  it  was  wrong ; I am  perfectly  willing  to 
allow,  that  the  lemon  yellow  is  not  properly  representa- 
tive of  the  yellow  of  the  sky,  that  the  loading  of  the 
color  is  in  many  places  disagreeable,  that  many  of  the 
details  are  drawn  with  a kind  of  imperfection  different 
from  what  they  would  have  in  nature,  and  that  many  of 
the  parts  fail  of  imitation,  especially  to  an  uneducated 
eye.  But  no  living  authority  is  of  weight  enough  to 
prove  that  the  virtues  of  the  picture  could  have  been 
obtained  at  a less  sacrifice,  or  that  they  are  not  worth 
the  sacrifice ; and  though  it  is  perfectly  possible  that 
such  may  be  the  case,  and  that  what  Turner  has  done 
may  hereafter  in  some  respects  be  done  better,  I believe 
myself  that  these  works  are  at  the  time  of  their  first  ap- 
pearing as  perfect  as  those  of  Phidias  or  Leonardo  ; that 
is  to  say,  incapable,  in  their  way,  of  any  improvement 
conceivable  by  human  mind. 

Also,  it  is  only  by  comparison  with  such  that  we  are 
authorized  to  affirm  definite  faults  in  any  of  his  others, 
for  we  should  have  been  bound  to  speak,  at  least  for  the 
present,  with  the  same  modesty  respecting  even  his  worst 
pictures  of  this  class,  had  not  his  more  noble  efforts  given 
us  canons  of  criticism. 

But,  as  was  beforehand  to  be  expected  from  the  diffi- 
culties he  grappled  with,  Turner  is  exceedingly  unequal ; 
he  appears  always  as  a champion  in  the  thick  of  fight, 
sometimes  with  his  foot  on  his  enemies’  necks,  sometimes 
staggered  or  struck  to  his  knee ; once  or  twice  altogether 
down.  He  has  failed  most  frequently,  as  before  noticed, 
in  elaborate  compositions,  from  redundant  quantity ; 
sometimes,  like  most  other  men,  from  overcare,  as  very 


232 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


signally  in  a large  and  most  labored  drawing  of  Bambor- 
ough ; sometimes,  unaccountably,  his  eye  for  color  seem- 
ing to  fail  him  for  a time,  as  in  a large  painting  of  Borne 
from  the  Forum,  and  in  the  Cicero’s  Villa,  Building  of 
Carthage,  and  the  picture  of  this  year  in  the  British  In- 
stitution ; and  sometimes,  I am  sorry  to  say,  criminally, 
from  taking  licenses  which  he  must  know  to  be  illegiti- 
mate, or  indulging  in  conventionalities  which  he  does 
not  require. 

On  such  instances  I shall  not  insist,  for  the  finding 
fault  with  Turner  is  not,  I think,  either  decorous  in  my- 
self or  like  to  be  beneficial  to  the  reader.*  The  greater 
number  of  failures  took  place  in  the  transition  period, 

* One  point,  however,  it  is  incumbent  upon  me  to  notice,  being  no 
question  of  art  but  of  material.  The  reader  will  have  observed  that  I 
strictly  limited  the  perfection  of  Turner’s  works  to  the  time  of  their 
first  appearing  on  the  walls  of  the  Royal  Academy.  It  bitterly  grieves 
me  to  have  to  do  this,  but  the  fact  is  indeed  so.  No  picture  of  Turner’s 
is  seen  in  perfection  a month  after  it  is  painted.  The  Walhalla 
cracked  before  it  had  been  eight  days  in  the  Academy  rooms  ; the 
vermilions  frequently  lose  lustre  long  before  the  exhibition  is  over ; 
and  when  all  the  colors  begin  to  get  hard  a year  or  two  after  the  pict- 
ure is  painted,  a painful  deadness  and  opacity  comes  over  them,  the 
whites  especially  becoming  lifeless,  and  many  of  the  warmer  passages 
settling  into  a hard  valueless  brown,  even  if  the  paint  remains  per- 
fectly firm,  which  is  far  from  being  always  the  case.  I believe  that 
in  some  measure  these  results  are  unavoidable,  the  colors  being  so  pe- 
culiarly blended  and  mingled  in  Turner’s  present  manner  as  almost  to 
necessitate  their  irregular  drying  ; but  that  they  are  not  necessary  to 
the  extent  in  which  they  sometimes  take  place,  is  proved  by  the  com- 
parative safety  of  some  even  of  the  more  brilliant  works.  Thus  the 
Old  Temeraire  is  nearly  safe  in  color,  and  quite  firm  ; while  the  Juliet 
and  her  Nurse  is  now  the  ghost  of  what  it  was  ; the  Slaver  shows  no 
cracks,  though  it  is  chilled  in  some  of  the  darker  passages,  while  the 
Walhalla  and  several  of  the  recent  Venices  cracked  in  the  Royal  Acad- 
emy. It  is  true  that  the  damage  makes  no  further  progress  after  the 
first  year  or  two,  and  that  even  in  its  altered  state  the  picture  is  always 
valuable  and  records  its  intention  ; but  it  is  bitterly  to  be  regretted 
that  so  great  a painter  should  not  leave  a single  work  by  which  in  suc- 
ceeding ages  he  might  be  estimated.  The  fact  of  his  using  means  so 
imperfect,  together  with  that  of  his  utter  neglect  of  the  pictures  in  his 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


233 


when  the  artist  was  feeling  for  the  new  qualities,  and 
endeavoring  to  reconcile  them  with  more  careful  elabo- 
ration of  form  than  was  properly  consistent  „ 

with  them.  Gradually  his  hand  became  ^rkJer?  recent 
more  free,  his  perception  and  grasp  of  the 
new  truths  more  certain,  and  his  choice  of  subject  more 
adapted  to  the  exhibition  of  them.  But  his  powers  did 
not  attain  their  highest  results  till  toward  the  year  1840, 
about  which  period  they  did  so  suddenly,  and  with  a 
vigor  and  concentration  which  rendered  his  pictures  at 
that  time  almost  incomparable  with  those  which  had 
preceded  them.  The  drawings  of  Nemi  and  Oberwesel, 
in  the  j)ossession-of  B.  G.  Windus,  Esq.,  were  among  the 
first  evidences  of  this  sudden  advance ; only  the  foliage 
in  both  of  these  is  inferior;  and  it  is  remarkable  that  in 
this  phase  of  his  art,  Turner  has  drawn  little  foliage, 
and  that  little  badly — the  great  characteristic  of  it  being 
its  power,  beauty,  and  majesty  of  color,  and  its  abandon- 
ment of  all  littleness  and  division  of  thought  to  a single 
impression.  In  the  year  1842,  he  made  some  drawings 
from  recent  sketches  in  Switzerland ; these,  with  some 
produced  in  the  following  years,  all  of  Swiss  subject,  I 

own  gallery,  are  a phenomenon  in  human  mind  which  appears  to  me 
utterly  inexplicable  ; and  both  are  without  excuse.  If  the  effects  he 
desires  cannot  be  to  their  full  extent  produced  except  by  these  treach- 
erous means,  one  picture  only  should  be  painted  each  year  as  an  exhi- 
bition of  immediate  power,  and  the  rest  should  be  carried  out,  what- 
ever the  expense  of  labor  and  time,  in  safe  materials,  even  at  the  risk 
of  some  deterioration  of  immediate  effect.  That  which  is  greatest  in 
him  is  entirely  independent  of  means  ; much  of  what  he  now  accom- 
plishes illegitimately  might  without  doubt  be  attained  in  securer  modes 
— wdiat  cannot  should  without  hesitation  be  abandoned.  Fortunately 
the  drawings  appear  subject  to  no  such  deterioration.  Many  of  them 
are  now  almost  destroyed,  but  this  has  been,  I think,  always  through 
ill-treatment,  or  has  been  the  case  only  with  very  early  works.  I have 
myself  known  no  instance  of  a drawing  properly  protected,  and  not 
rashly  exposed  to  light  suffering  the  slightest  change.  The  great  foes 
of  Turner,  as  of  all  other  great  colorists  especially,  are  the  picture- 
cleaner  and  the  mounter. 


234 


GENERAL  APPLICATION  OF 


consider  to  be,  on  the  whole,  the  most  characteristic  and 
perfect  works  he  has  ever  produced.  The  Academy  pict- 
ures were  far  inferior  to  them ; but  among-  these  exam- 
ples of  the  same  power  were  not  -wanting,  more  especially 
in  the  smaller  pictures  of  Yenice.  The  Sun  of  Yenice, 
going  to  sea ; the  San  Benedetto,  looking  towards  Fu- 
sina ; and  a view  of  Murano,  with  the  Cemetery,  were  all 
faultless ; another  of  Yenice,  seen  from  near  Fusina,  with 
sunlight  and  moonlight  mixed  (1844)  was,  I think,  when 
I first  saw  it,  (and  it  still  remains  little  injured,)  the  most 
perfectly  beautiful  piece  of  color  of  all  that  I have  seen 
produced  by  human  hands,  by  any  means,  or  at  any 
period.  Of  the  exhibition  of  1845, 1 have  only  seen  a 
small  Yenice,  (still  I believe  in  the  artist’s  possession,) 
and  the  two  whaling  subjects.  The  Yenice  is  a second- 
rate  work,  and  the  two  others  altogether  unworthy  of 
him. 

In  conclusion  of  our  present  sketch  of  the  course  of 
landscape  art,  it  may  be  generally  stated  that  Turner  is 
the  only  painter,  so  far  as  I know,  who  has  ever  drawn 
the  sky,  (not  the  clear  sky,  which  we  before  saw  belonged 
exclusively  to  the  religious  schools,  but  the  various 
forms  and  phenomena  of  the  cloudy  heavens,)  all  previ- 
vious  artists  having  only  represented  it  typically  or  par- 
tially ; but  he  absolutely  and  universally : he  is  the  only 
painter  who  has  ever  drawn  a mountain,  or  a stone ; no 
other  man  ever  having  learned  their  organization,  or 
possessed  himself  of  their  spirit,  except  in  part  and  ob- 
scurely, (the  one  or  two  stones  noted  of  Tintoret’s,  (Yol. 
II.,  Part  iii.,  Ch.  3,)  are  perhaps  hardly  enough  on 
which  to  found  an  exception  in  his  favor.)  He  is  the 
only  painter  who  ever  drew  the  stem  of  a tree,  Titian 
having  come  the  nearest  before  him,  and  excelling  him  in 
the  muscular  development  of  the  larger  trunks,  (though 
sometimes  losing  the  woody  strength  in  a serpent-like 
fiaccidity,)  but  missing  the  grace  and  character  of  the 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


235 


ramifications.  He  is  the  only  painter  who  has  ever  rep- 
resented the  surface  of  calm,  or  the  force  of  agitated 
water ; who  has  represented  the  effects  of  space  on  dis- 
tant objects,  or  who  has  rendered  the  abstract  beauty 
of  natural  color.  These  assertions  I make  deliberately, 
after  careful  weighing  and  consideration,  in  no  spirit  of 
dispute,  or  momentary  zeal;  but  from  strong  and  con- 
vinced feeling,  and  with  the  consciousness  of  being  able 
to  prove  them. 

This  proof  is  only  partially  and  incidentally  attempted 
in  the  present  portion  of  this  work,  which  was  originally 
written,  as  before  explained,  for  a temporary  purpose, 
and  which,  therefore,  I should  have  gladly  cancelled, 
but  that,  relating  as  it  does  only  to  simple  matters  of 
fact  and  not  to  those  of  feeling,  it  may  still,  perhaps,  be 
of  service  to  some  readers  who  would  be  unwilling  to  enter 
into  the  more  speculative  fields  with  which  the  succeed- 
ing sections  are  concerned.  I leave,  therefore,  nearly  as 
it  was  originally  written,  the  following  examination  of 
the  relative  truthfulness  of  elder  and  of  recent  art ; always 
requesting  the  reader  to  remember,  as  some  excuse  for 
the  inadequate  execution,  even  of  what  I 

, , H , , , -I  u . , §47.  Difficulty  of 

have  here  attempted,  how  difficult  it  is  to  demonstration  in 
. - such  subjects. 

express  or  explain,  by  language  only,  those 
delicate  qualities  of  the  object  of  sense,  on  the  seizing  of 
which  ail  refined  truth  of  representation  depends.  Try, 
for  instance,  to  explain  in  language  the  exact  qualities  of 
the  lines  on  which  depend  the  whole  truth  and  beauty  of 
expression  about  the  half-opened  lips  of  Baffaelie’s  St. 
Catherine.  There  is,  indeed,  nothing  in  landscape  so 
ineffable  as  this;  but  there  is  no  part  nor  portion  of 
God’s  works  in  which  the  delicacy  appreciable  by  a cul- 
tivated eye,  and  necessary  to  be  rendered  in  art,  is  not 
beyond  all  expression  and  explanation ; I cannot  tell  it 
you,  if  you  do  not  see  it.  And  thus  I have  been  entirely 
unable,  in  the  following  pages,  to  demonstrate  clearly 


23G 


THE  FOREGOING  PRINCIPLES. 


anything  of  really  deep  and  perfect  truth ; nothing  but 
what  is  coarse  and  commonplace,  in  matters  to  be  judged 
of  by  the  senses,  is  within  the  reach  of  argument.  How 
much  or  how  little  I have  done  must  be  judged  of  by  the 
reader : how  much  it  is  impossible  to  do  I have  more 
fully  shown  in  the  concluding  section. 

I shall  first  take  into  consideration  those  general 
truths,  common  to  all  the  objects  of  nature,  which  are 
productive  of  what  is  usually  called  “ effect,”  that  is  to 
say,  truths  of  tone,  general  color,  space,  and  light.  I 
shall  then  investigate  the  truths  of  specific  form  and 
color,  in  the  four  great  component  parts  of  landscape — 
sky,  earth,  water,  and  vegetation. 


SECTION  n. 


OF  GENERAL  TRUTHS. 


CHAPTEE  I 

OF  TRUTH  OF  TONE. 


As  I have  already  allowed,  that  in  effects  of  tone,  the 
old  masters  have  never  yet  been  equalled ; and  as  this  is 
the  first,  and  nearly  the  last,  concession  I shall  have  to 
make  to  them,  I wish  it  at  once  to  be  thoroughly  under- 
stood how  far  it  extends. 

I understand  two  thing's  by  the  word  “ tone : ’’—first, 
the  exact  relief  and  relation  of  objects  against  and  to 
each  other  in  substance  and  darkness,  as 
they  are  nearer  or  more  distant,  and  the 
perfect  relation  of  the  shades  of  all  of  them 
to  the  chief  light  of  the  picture,  whether 
that  be  sky,  water,  or  anything  else.  Secondly,  the  ex- 
act relation  of  the  colors  of  the  shadows  to  the  colors  of 
the  lights,  so  that  they  may  be  at  once  felt 
to  be  merely  different  degrees  of  the  same 
light ; and  the  accurate  relation  among  the 
illuminated  parts  themselves,  with  respect 
to  the  degree  in  which  they  are  influenced 
by  the  color  of  the  light  itself,  whether  warm  or  cold ; so 
that  the  whole  of  the  picture  (or,  where  several  tones 
are  united,  those  parts  of  it  which  are  under  each),  may 
be  felt  to  be  in  one  climate,  under  one  kind  of  light,  and 


§ 1.  Meaning  of 
the  word  “tone:*’ 
First,  the  right  re- 
lation of  objects 
in  shadow  to  the 
principal  light. 


§ 2.  Secondly,  the 
quality  of  color  by 
which  it  is  felt  to 
owe  part  of  its 
brightness  to  the 
hue  of  light  upon 
it. 


238 


OF  TRUTH  OF  TONE. 


in  one  kind  of  atmosphere ; this  being  chiefly  dependent 
on  that  peculiar  and  inexplicable  quality  of  each  color 
laid  on,  which  makes  the  eye  feel  both  what  is  the  actual 
color  of  the  object  represented,  and  that  it  is  raised 
to  its  apparent  pitch  by  illumination.  A very  bright 
brown,  for  instance,  out  of  sunshine,  may  be  precisely  of 
the  same  shade  of  color  as  a very  dead  or  cold  brown  in 
sunshine,  but  it  will  be  totally  different  in  quality ; 
and  that  quality  by  which  the  illuminated  dead  color 
would  be  felt  in  nature  different  from  the  unilluminated 
bright  one,  is  what  artists  are  perpetually  aiming  at,  and 
connoisseurs  talking  nonsense  about,  under  the  name  of 
“ tone.”  The  want  of  tone  in  pictures  is  caused  by  ob- 
jects looking  bright  in  their  own  positive  hue,  and  not 
by  illumination,  and  by  the  consequent  want  of  sensa- 
tion of  the  raising  of  their  hues  by  light. 

The  first  of  these  meanings  of  the  word  “tone”  is 
liable  to  be  confounded  with  what  is  commonly  called 
aerial  perspective.”  But  aerial  perspec- 


§.3.  Bifferenee  be- 
tween tone  m its 
first  sense  and 


tween  tone  m its  tive  is  the  expression  of  space,  by  any 


aerial  perspective,  means  whatsoever,  sharpness  of  edge,  viv- 
idness of  color,  etc.,  assisted  by  greater  pitch  of  shadow, 
and  requires  only  that  objects  should  be  detached 
from  each  other,  by  degrees  of  intensity  in  proportion 
to  their  distance,  without  requiring  that  the  difference 
between  the  farthest  and  nearest  should  be  in  positive 
quantity  the  same  that  nature  has  put.  But  what  I 
have  called  “ tone  ” requires  that  there  should  be  the 
same  sum  of  difference,  as  well  as  the  same  division  of 
differences. 

Now  the  finely  toned  pictures  of  the  old  masters  are, 
in  this  respect,  some  of  the  notes  of  nature  played  two 
§Al_Th®  Pict^es  or  three  octaves  below  her  key:  the  dark 

of  the  old  masters  . . 

perfect  in  relation  o meets  m the  middle  distance  having  pre- 

of  middle  tints  to  . n , . . . 

light.  eisely  the  same  relation  to  the  light  ot  the 

sky  which  they  have  in  nature,  but  the  light  being  nec- 


OF  TRUTH  OF  TONE. 


239 


essarily  infinitely  lowered,  and  the  mass  of  the  shadow 
deepened  in  the  same  degree.  I have  often  been  struck, 
when  looking  at  a camera-obscuro  on  a dark  day,  with 
the  exact  resemblance  the  image  bore  to  one  of  the  finest 
pictures  of  the  old  masters  ; all  the  foliage  coming  dark 
against  the  sky,  and  nothing  being  seen  in  its  mass  but 
here  and  there  the  isolated  light  of  a silvery  stem  or  an 
unusually  illumined  cluster  of  leafage. 

.Now  if  this  could  be  done  consistently,  and  all  the 
notes  of  nature  given  in  this  way  an  octave  or  two  down, 
it  would  be  right  and  necessary  so  to  do:  „ „ 

but  be  it  observed,  not  only  does  nature  quentiy  totally 

. 7 . . false  m relation  of 

surpass  us  m power  oi  obtaining  light  as  ^die^tmts  to 
much  as  the  sun  surpasses  white  paper,  but 
she  also  infinitely  surpasses  us  in  her  power  of  shade. 
Her  deepest  shades  are  void  spaces  from  which  no  light 
whatever  is  reflected  to  the  eye ; ours  are  black  surfaces 
from  which,  paint  as  black  as  we  may,  a great  deal  of 
light  is  still  reflected,  and  which,  placed  against  one  of 
nature’s  deep  bits  of  gloom,  would  tell  as  distinct  light. 
Here  we  are  then,  with  white  paper  for  our  highest  light, 
and  visible  illumined  surface  for  our  deepest  shadow,  set 
to  run  the  gauntlet  against  nature,  with  the  sun  for  her 
light,  and  vacuity  for  her  gloom.  It  is  evident  that  she 
can  well  afford  to  throw  her  material  objects  dark  against 
the  brilliant  aerial  tone  of  her  sky,  and  yet  give  in  those 
objects  themselves  a thousand  intermediate  distances 
and  tones  before  she  comes  to  black,  or  to  anything  like 
it — all  the  illumined  surfaces  of  her  objects  being  as  dis- 
tinctly and  vividly  brighter  than  her  nearest  and  darkest 
shadows,  as  the  sky  is  brighter  than  those  illumined  sur- 
faces. But  if  we,  against  our  poor,  dull  obscurity  of 
yellow  paint,  instead  of  sky,  insist  on  having  the  same 
relation  of  shade  in  material  objects,  we  go  down  to  the 
bottom  of  our  scale  at  once ; and  what  in  the  world  are 
we  to  do  then  ? Where  are  all  our  intermediate  distances 


240 


OF  TRUTH  OF  TONE. 


to  come  from  ? — how  are  we  to  express  the  aerial  rela- 
tions among  the  parts  themselves,  for  instance,  of  foliage, 
whose  most  distant  boughs  are  already  almost  black  ? — 
how  are  we  to  come  up  from  this  to  the  foreground,  and 
when  we  have  done  so,  how  are  we  to  express  the  distinc- 
tion between  its  solid  parts,  already  as  dark  as  we  can 
make  them,  and  its  vacant  hollows,  which  nature  has 
marked  sharp  and  clear  and  black,  among#its  lighted  sur- 
faces ? It  cannot  but  be  evident  at  a glance,  that  if  to 
any  one  of  the  steps  from  one  distance  to  another,  we  give 
the  same  quantity  of  difference  in  pitch  of  shade  which 
nature  does,  we  must  pay  for  this  expenditure  of  our  means 
by  totally  missing  half  a dozen  distances,  not  a whit  less 
important  or  marked,  and  so  sacrifice  a multitude  of 
truths,  to  obtain  one.  And  this,  accordingly  was  the 
means  by  which  the  old  masters  obtained  their  (truth  ?) 
of  tone.  They  chose  those  steps  of  distance  which  are 
the  most  conspicuous  and  noticeable — that  for  instance 
from  sky  to  foliage,  or  from  clouds  to  hills — and  they 
gave  these  their  precise  pitch  of  difference  in  shade  with 
exquisite  accuracy  of  imitation.  Their  means  were  then 
exhausted,  and  they  were  obliged  to  leave  their  trees  flat 
masses  of  mere  filled-up  outline,  and  to  omit  the  truths 
of  space  in  every  individual  part  of  their  picture  by  the 
thousand.  But  this  they  did  not  care  for ; it  saved  them 
trouble ; they  reached  their  grand  end,  imitative  effect ; 
they  thrust  home  just  at  the  places  where  the  common 
and  careless  eye  looks  for  imitation,  and  they  attained 
the  broadest  and  most  faithful  appearance  of  truth  of 
tone  which  art  can  exhibit. 

But  they  are  prodigals,  and  foolish  prodigals,  in  art ; 
they  lavish  their  whole  means  to  get  one  truth,  and  leave 

themselves  powerless  when  they  should 

§ 6.  General  false-  . , 

hood  of  such  a seize  a thousand.  And  is  it  indeed  worthy 

system.  # 

of  being  called  a truth,  when  we  have  a 
vast  history  given  us  to  relate,  to  the  fulness  of  which 


OF  TRUTH  OF  TONE. 


241 


neither  our  limits  nor  our  language  are  adequate,  instead 
of  giving  all  its  parts  abridged  in  the  order  of  their  im- 
portance, to  omit  or  deny  the  greater  part  of  them,  that 
we  may  dwell  with  verbal  fidelity  on  two  or  three  ? Nay, 
the  very  truth  to  which  the  rest  are  sacrificed  is  rendered 
falsehood  by  their  absence,  the  relation  of  the  tree  to 
the  sky  is  marked  as  an  impossibility  by  the  want  of 
relation  of  its  parts  to  each  other. 

'Turner  starts  from  the  beginning  with  a totally  differ- 
ent principle.  He  boldly  takes  pure  white  (and  justly, 
for  it  is  the  sign  of  the  most  intense  sun-  . . . 

beams)  for  his  highest  light,  and  lamp-  of^ Turner  in  this 
black  for  his  deepest  shade ; and  between 
these  he  makes  every  degree  of  shade  indicative  of  a sep- 
arate degree  of  distance,*  giving  each  step  of  approach, 
not  the  exact  difference  in  pitch  which  it  would  have  in 
nature,  but  a difference  bearing  the  same  proportion  to 
that  which  his  sum  of  possible  shade  bears  to  the  sum 
of  nature’s  shade;  so  that  an  object  half  way  between 
his  horizon  and  his  foreground  will  be  exactly  in  half 
tint  of  force,  and  every  minute  division  of  intermediate 
space  will  have  just  its  proportionate  share  of  the  lesser 
sum,  and  no  more.  Hence  where  the  old  masters  ex- 
pressed one  distance,  he  expresses  a hundred;  and  where 
they  said  furlongs,  he  says  leagues.  Which  of  these 
modes  of  procedure  be  most  agreeable  with  truth,  I think 
I may  safely  leave  the  reader  to  decide  for  himself.  He 
will  see  in  this  very  first  instance,  one  proof  of  what  we 
above  asserted,  that  the  deceptive  imitation  of  nature  is 
inconsistent  with  real  truth ; for  the  very  means  by  which 
the  old  masters  attained  the  apparent  accuracy  of  tone 

* Of  course  I am  not  speaking  here  of  treatment  of  chiaroscuro,  but 
of  that  quantity  of  depth  of  shade  by  which,  cceteris  paribus,  a near  ob- 
ject will  exceed  a distant  one.  For  the  truth  of  the  systems  of  Turner 
and  the  old  masters,  as  regards  chiaroscuro,  vide  Chapter  III.  of  this 
Section,  § 8. 

m 


242 


OF  TRUTH  OF  TONE. 


which  is  so  satisfying  to  the  eye,  compelled  them  to  give 
up  all  idea  of  real  relations  of  retirement,  and  to  repre- 
sent a few  successive  and  marked  stages  of  distance,  like 
the  scenes  of  a theatre,  instead  of  the  imperceptible, 
multitudinous,  symmetrical  retirement  of  nature,  who  is 
not  more  careful  to  separate  her  nearest  bush  from  her 
farthest  one,  than  to  separate  the  nearest  bough  of  that 
bush  from  the  one  next  to  it. 

Take,  for  instance,  one  of  the  finest  landscaj>es  that 
ancient  art  has  produced — the  work  of  a really  great  and 
intellectual  mind,  the  quiet  Nicholas  Pous- 

§ 8.  Comparison  of  . , • i ^ n 

n^p  on  as  in’s  sin,  in  our  own  JN  ational  Gallery,  with  the 
traveller  washing  his  feet.  The  first  idea 
we  receive  from  this  picture  is  that  it  is  evening,  and 
all  the  light  coming  from  the  horizon.  Not  so.  It  is  full 
noon,  the  light  coming  steep  from  the  left,  as  is  shown 
by  the  shadow  of  the  stick  on  the  right-hand  pedestal — 
(for  if  the  sun  were  not  very  high,  that  shadow  could  not 
lose  itself  half-way  down,  and  if  it  were  not  lateral,  the 
shadow  would  slope,  instead  of  being  vertical).  Now, 
ask  yourself,  and  answer  candidly,  if  those  black  masses 
of  foliage,  in  which  scarcely  any  form  is  seen  but  the 
outline,  be  a true  representation  of  trees  under  noon- 
day sunlight,  sloping  from  the  left,  bringing  out,  as  it 
necessarily  would  do,  their  masses  into  golden  green, 
and  marking  every  leaf  and  bough  with  sharp  shadow 
and  sparkling  light.  The  only  truth  in  the  picture  is 
the  exact  pitch  of  relief  against  the  sky  of  both  trees 
and  hills,  and  to  this  the  organization  of  the  hills,  the 
intricacy  of  the  foliage,  and  everything  indicative  either 
of  the  nature  of  the  light,  or  the  character  of  the  objects, 
are  unhesitatingly  sacrificed.  So  much  falsehood  does  it 
cost  to  obtain  two  apparent  truths  of  tone.  Or  take,  as 
a still  more  glaring  instance,  No.  260  in  the  Dulwich 
Gallery,  where  the  trunks  of  the  trees,  even  of  those 
farthest  off,  on  the  left,  are  as  black  as  paint  can  make 


OF  TRUTH  OF  TONE . 


243 


them,  and  there  is  not,  and  cannot  be,  the  slightest  in- 
crease of  force,  or  any  marking  whatsoever  of  distance 
by  color,  or  any  other  means,  between  them  and  the  fore- 
ground. 

Compare  with  these  Turner’s  treatment  of  his  materi- 
als in  the  Mercury  and  Argus.  He  has  here  his  light 
actually  coming  from  the  distance,  the  sun 

, . , - , , . § 9.  With  Turn- 

bemg  nearly  m the  centre  oi  the  picture,  er’s“  Mercury  and 

and  a violent  relief  of  objects  against  it 
would  be  far  more  justifiable  than  in  Poussin’s  case.  But 
this  dark  relief  is  used  in  its  full  force  only  with  the 
nearest  leaves  of  the  nearest  group  of  foliage  over- 
hanging the  foreground  from  the  left ; and  between  these 
and  the  more  distant  members  of  the  same  group,  though 
only  three  or  four  yards  separate,  distinct  aerial  per- 
spective and  intervening  mist  and  light  are  shown; 
while  the  large  tree  in  the  centre,  though  very  dark,  as 
being  very  near,  compared  with  all  the  distance,  is  much 
diminished  in  intensity  of  shade  from  this  nearest 
group  of  leaves,  and  is  faint  compared  with  all  the  fore- 
ground. It  is  true  that  this  tree  has  not,  in  consequence, 
the  actual  pitch  of  shade  against  the  sky  which  it  would 
have  in  nature ; but  it  has  precisely  as  much  as  it  pos- 
sibly can  have,  to  leave  it  the  same  proportionate  rela- 
tion to  the  objects  near  at  hand.  And  it  cannot  but  be 
evident  to  the  thoughtful  reader,  that  whatever  trickery 
or  deception  may  be  the  result  of  a contrary  mode  of 
treatment,  this  is  the  only  scientific  or  essentially  truth- 
ful system,  and  that  what  it  loses  in  tone  it  gains  in 
aerial  perspective. 

Compare  again  the  last  vignette  in  Rogers’s  Poems, 
the  “Datur  Hora  Quieti,”  where  everything,  even  the 
darkest  parts  of  the  trees,  is  kept  pale  and  io  And 
full  of  graduation;  even  the  bridge  where  the  '“Datur  Hora 
it  crosses  the  descending  stream  of  sun- 
shine, rather  lost  in  the  light  than  relieved  against  it. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  TONE. 


2 U 

until  we  come  up  to  the  foreground,  and  then  the  vigor- 
ous local  black  of  the  plough  throws  the  whole  picture 
into  distance  and  sunshine.  I do  not  know  anything  in 
art  which  can  for  a moment  be  set  beside  this  drawing 
for  united  intensity  of  light  and  repose. 

Observe,  I am  not  at  present  speaking  of  the  beauty  or 
desirableness  of  the  system  of  the  old  masters ; it  may  be 
sublime,  and  affecting,  and  ideal,  and  intellectual,  and  a 
great  deal  more ; but  all  I am  concerned  with  at  present 
is,  that  it  is  not  true  ; while  Turner’s  is  the  closest  and 
most  studied  approach  to  truth  of  which  the  materials 
of  art  admit. 

It  was  not,  therefore,  with  reference  to  this  division  of 
the  subject  that  I admitted  inferiority  in  our  great  mod- 

§ 11  The  second  ern  mas^er  1°  Claude  or  Poussin,  but  with 
sense  of  the  word  reference  to  the  second  and  more  usual 

tone/7 

meaning  of  the  word  “tone” — the  exact 
relation  and  fitness  of  shadow  and  light,  and  of  the 
hues  of  all  objects  under  them  ; and  more  especially  that 
precious  quality  of  each  color  laid  on,  which  makes  it 
appear  a quiet  color  illuminated,  not  a bright  color  in 
shade.  But  I allow  this  inferiority  only  with  respect  to 
§12.  Remarkable  the  paintings,  of  Turner,  not  to  his  draw- 
refpect100 between  intos-  I could  select  from  among  the  works 
dr  a whiggf  of  t urn-  named  in  Chap.  VI.  of  this  section,  pieces 
er-  of  tone  absolutely  faultless  and  perfect, 

from  the  coolest  grays  of  wintry  dawn  to  the  intense  fire 
of  summer  noon.  And  the  difference  between  the  pre- 
vailing character  of  these  and  that  of  nearly  all  the 
paintings,  (for  the  early  oil  pictures  of  Turner  are  far  less 
perfect  in  tone  than  the  most  recent,)  it  is  difficult  to  ac- 
count for,  but  on  the  supposition  that  there  is  something 
in  the  material  which  modern  artists  in  general  are  in- 
capable of  mastering,  and  which  compels  Turner  him- 
self to  think  less  of  tone  in  oil  color,  than  of  other  and 
more  important  qualities.  The  total  failures  of  Callcott, 


OF  TRUTH  OF  TONE. 


245 


whose  struggles  after  tone  ended  so  invariably  in  shiver- 
ing winter  or  brown  paint,  the  misfortune  of  Landseer 
with  his  evening  sky  in  1842,  the  frigidity  of  Stanfield, 
and  the  earthiness  and  opacity  which  all  the  magnificent 
power  and  admirable  science  of  Etty  are  unable  entirely 
to  conquer,  are  too  fatal  and  convincing  proofs  of  the 
want  of  knowledge  of  means,  rather  than  of  the  absence 
of  aim,  in  modern  artists  as  a body.  Yet,  g ^ ^ ^ ^ 
with  respect  to  Turner,  however  much  the  to  want  of  power 
want  of  tone  in  his  early  paintings  (the  Fall  °ver  tne  mateildL 
of  Carthage,  for  instance,  and  others  painted  at  a time 
when  he  was  producing  the  most  exquisite  hues  of  light 
in  water-color)  might  seem  to  favor  such  a supposition, 
there  are  passages  in  his  recent  works  (such,  for  instance, 
as  the  sunlight  along  the  sea,  in  the  Slaver)  which  di- 
rectly contradict  it,  and  which  prove  to  us  that  wdiere  he 
now  errs  in  tone,  (as  in  the  Cicero’s  Villa,)  it  is  less  ow- 
ing to  want  of  power  to  reach  it,  than  to  the  pursuit  of 
some  different  and  nobler  end.  I shall  therefore  glance 
at  the  particular  modes  in  which  Turner  manages  his 
tone  in  his  present  Academy  pictures ; the  early  ones 
must  be  given  up  at  once.  Place  a genuine  untouched 
Claude  beside  the  Crossing  the  Brook,  and  the  difference 
in  value  and  tenderness  of  tone  will  be  felt  in  an  instant, 
and  felt  the  more  painfully  because  all  the  cool  and 
transparent  qualities  of  Claude  wTould  have  been  here  de- 
sirable, and  in  their  place,  and  appear  to  have  been 
aimed  at.  The  foreground  of  the  Building  of  Carthage, 
and  the  greater  part  of  the  architecture  of  the  Fall,  are 
equally  heavy  and  evidently  paint,  if  we  compare  them 
with  genuine  passages  of  Claude’s  sunshine.  There  is  a 
very  grand  and  simple  piece  of  tone  in  the  possession  of 
J.  Allnutt,  Esq.,  a sunset  behind  willows,  but  even  this 
is  wanting  in  refinement  of  shadow,  and  is  crude  in  its 
extreme  distance.  Not  so  with  the  recent  Academy 
pictures  ; many  of  their  passages  are  absolutely  faultless ; 


246 


OF  TRUTH  OF  TON  FT 


all  are  refined  and  marvellous,  and  with  the  exception 
of  the  Cicero’s  Yilla,  we  shall  find  few  pictures  painted 
within  the  last  ten  years  which  do  not  either  present  us 
with  perfect  tone,  or  with  some  higher  beauty,  to  which 
it  is  necessarily  sacrificed.  If  we  glance  at  the  require- 
ments of  nature,  and  her  superiority  of  means  to  ours,  we 
shall  see  why  and  how  it  is  sacrificed. 

Light,  with  reference  to  the  tone  it  induces  on  objects, 
is  either  to  be  considered  as  neutral  and  white,  bringing 
§ i4.  The  two  ou^  l°cal  colors  with  fidelity ; or  colored, 
ofliSht  toqbecon-  anc^  consequently  modifying  these  local 
sidered.  tints,  with  its  own.  But  the  power  of 

pure  white  light  to  exhibit  local  color  is  strangely 
variable.  The  morning  light  of  about  nine  or  ten  is  usu- 
ally very  pure ; but  the  difference  of  its  effect  on  differ- 
ent days,  independently  of  mere  brilliancy,  is  as  incon- 
ceivable as  inexplicable.  Everyone  knows  how  capri- 
ciously the  colors  of  a fine  opal  vary  from  day  to  day,  and 
how  rare  the  lights  are  which  bring  them  fully  out. 
Now  the  expression  of  the  strange,  penetrating,  deep, 
neutral  light,  which,  while  it  alters  no  color,  brings 
every  color  up  to  the  highest  possible  pitch  and  key  of 
pure,  harmonious  intensity,  is  the  chief  attribute  of 
finely-toned  pictures  by  the  great  colorists  as  opposed 
to  pictures  of  equally  high  tone,  by  masters  who,  careless 
of  color,  are  content,  like  Cuyp,  to  lose  local  tints  in  the 
golden  blaze  of  absorbing  light. 

Falsehood,  in  this  neutral  tone,  if  it  may  be  so  called, 
is  a matter  far  more  of  feeling  than  of  proof,  for  any 
color  is  possible  under  such  lights ; it  is  meagreness  and 

15  Falsehoods  ^ee^eness  0]Qly  which  are  to  be  avoided ; 
by  which  Titian  and  these  are  rather  matters  of  sensation 

attains  the  appear-  _ . . . . . . 

ance  of  quality  in  than  ot  reasoning.  But  it  is  yet  easy 
enough  to  prove  by  what  exaggerated  and 
false  means  the  pictures  most  celebrated  for  this  quality 
are  endowed  with  their  richness  and  solemnity  of  color. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  TONE. 


24-7 


In  the  Bacchus  and  Ariadne  of  Titian,  it  is  difficult  to  im- 
agine anything  more  magnificently  impossible  than  the 
blue  of  the  distant  landscape ; — impossible,  not  from  its 
vividness,  but  because  it  is  not  faint  and  aerial  enough  to 
account  for  its  purity  of  color  ; it  is  too  dark  and  blue  at 
the  same  time ; and  there  is  indeed  so  total  a want  of 
atmosphere  in  it,  that,  but  for  the  difference  of  form,  it 
would  be  impossible  to  tell  the  mountains  (intended  to 
be  ten  miles  off)  from  the  robe  of  Ariadne  close  to  the 
spectator.  Yet  make  this  blue  faint,  aerial,  and  distant — 
make  it  in  the  slightest  degree  to  resemble  the  truth  of 
nature’s  color — and  all  the  tone  of  the  picture,  all  its 
intensity  and  splendor,  will  vanish  on  the  instant.  So 
again,  in  the  exquisite  and  inimitable  little  bit  of  color, 
the  Europa  in  the  Dulwich  Gallery ; the  blue  of  the  dark 
promontory  on  the  left  is  thoroughly  absurd  and  impos- 
sible, and  the  warm  tones  of  the  clouds  equally  so,  unless 
it  were  sunset ; but  the  blue  especially,  because  it  is 
nearer  than  several  points  of  land  which  are  equally  in 
shadow,  and  yet  are  rendered  in  warm  gray.  But  the 
whole  value  and  tone  of  the  picture  would  be  destroyed 
if  this  blue  wTere  altered. 

Now,  as  much  of  this  kind  of  richness  of  tone  is  always 
given  by  Turner  as  is  compatible  with  truth  of  aerial  ef- 
fect ; but  he  will  not  sacrifice  the  higher  ig  Tm.ner  wm 
truths  of  liis  landscape  to  mere  pitch  of  not  use  such 
color  as  Titian  does.  He  infinitely  prefers 
having  the  power  of  giving  extension  of  space,  and  ful- 
ness of  form,  to  that  of  giving  deep  melodies  of  tone ; he 
feels  too  much  the  incapacity  of  art,  with  its  feeble  means 
of  light,  to  give  the  abundance  of  nature’s  gradations ; 
and  therefore  it  is,  that  taking  pure  white  for  his  highest 
expression  of  light,  that  even  pure  yellow  may  give  him 
one  more  step  in  the  scale  of  shade,  he  becomes  necessa- 
rily inferior  in  richness  of  effect  to  the  old  masters  of 
tone,  (who  always  used  a golden  highest  light,)  but  gains 


248 


OF  TRUTH  OF  TONE. 


by  the  sacrifice  a thousand  more  essential  truths.  For, 
though  we  all  know  how  much  more  like  light,  in  the 
. abstract,  a finely-toned  warm  hue  will  be  to 
in  essential  truth  the  feelings  than  white,  yet  it  is  utterly 

by  the  sacrifice.  . ^ J 

impossible  to  mark  the  same  number  of  gra- 
dations between  such  a sobered  high  light  and  the  deep- 
est shadow,  which  we  can  between  this  and  white ; and 
as  these  gradations  are  absolutely  necessary  to  give  the 
facts  of  form  and  distance,  which,  as  we  have  above 
shown,  are  more  important  than  any  truths  of  tone,* 
Turner  sacrifices  the  richness  of  his  picture  to  its  com- 
pleteness— the  manner  of  the  statement  to  its  matter. 
And  not  only  is  he  right  in  doing  this  for  the  sake 
of  space,  but  he  is  right  also  in  the  abstract  ques- 
tion of  color ; for  as  we  observed  above  (Sect.  14,)  it  is 
only  the  white  light — the  perfect  unmodified  group  of 
rays — which  will  bring  out  local  color  perfectly ; and  if 
the  picture,  therefore,  is  to  be  complete  in  its  system  of 
color,  that  is,  if  it  is  to  have  each  of  the  three  primitives 
in  their  purity,  it  must  have  white  for  its  hig'hest  light, 
otherwise  the  puritjr  of  one  of  them  at  least  will  be  im- 
possible. And  this  leads  us  to  notice  the  second  and 
§ is.  The  second  more  frequent  quality  of  light,  (which  is 
quality  of  light.  assumed  if  we  make  our  highest  represen- 

tation of  it  yellow,)  the  positive  hue,  namely,  which  it 
may  itself  possess,  of  course  modifying  whatever  local 
tints  it  exhibits,  and  thereby  rendering  certain  colors 
necessary,  and  certain  colors  impossible.  Under  the  di- 
rect yellow  light  of  a descending  sun,  for  instance,  pure 
white  and  pure  blue  are  both  impossible ; because  the 
purest  whites  and  blues  that  nature  could  produce  would 
be  turned  in  some  degree  into  gold  or  green  by  it ; and 
when  the  sun  is  within  half  a degree  of  the  horizon,  if 


* More  important,  observe,  as  matters  of  truth  or  fact.  It  may  of- 
ten chance  that,  as  a matter  of  feeling,  the  tone  is  the  more  important 
of  the  two  ; but  with  this  we  have  here  no  concern. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  TONE. 


249 


the  sky  be  clear,  a rose  light  supersedes  the  golden  one, 
still  more  overwhelming  in  its  effect  on  local  color.  I 
have  seen  the  pale  fresh  green  of  spring  vegetation  in 
the  gardens  of  Venice,  on  the  Lido  side,  turned  pure 
russet,  or  between  that  and  crimson,  by  a vivid  sunset  of 
this  kind,  every  particle  of  green  color  being  absolutely 
annihilated.  And  so  under  all  colored  lights,  (and  there 
are  few,  from  dawn  to  twilight,  which  are  not  slightly 
tinted  by  some  accident  of  atmosphere,)  there  is  a 
change  of  local  color,  which,  when  in  a picture  it  is  so 
exactly  proportioned  that  we  feel  at  once  both  what  the 
local  colors  are  in  themselves,  and  what  is  the  color 
and  strength  of  the  light  upon  them,  gives  us  truth  of 
tone. 

For  expression  of  effects  of  yellow  sunlight,  parts  might 
be  chosen  out  of  the  good  pictures  of  Cuyp,  which  have 
never  been  equalled  in  art.  But  I much  § 19  The  perfec. 

tion  of  Cuyp  in 
this  respect  in- 
terfered with  by 
numerous  sole- 

not  present  many  glaring  solecisms  in  tone.  ci8ms* 

I have  not  seen  many  fine  pictures  of  his,  which  were 
not  utterly  spoiled  by  the  vermilion  dress  of  some  prin- 
cipal figure,  a vermilion  totally  unaffected  and  un warmed 
by  the  golden  hue  of  the  rest  of  the  picture  ; and,  what 
is  worse,  with  little  distinction,  between  its  own  illu- 
mined and  shaded  parts,  so  that  it  appears  altogether 
out  of  sunshine,  the  color  of  a bright  vermilion  in  dead, 
cold  daylight.  It  is  possible  that  the  original  color  may 
have  gone  down  in  all  cases,  or  that  these  parts  may 
have  been  villanously  repainted : but  I am  the  rather  dis- 
posed to  believe  them  genuine,  because  even  throughout 
the  best  of  his  pictures  there  are  evident  recurrences  of 
the  same  kind  of  solecism  in  other  colors — greens  for  in- 
stance— as  in  the  steep  bank  on  the  right  of  the  largest 
picture  in  the  Dulwich  Gallery ; and  browns,  as  in  the 
lying  cow  in  the  same  picture,  which  is  in  most  visible  and 


doubt  if  there  be  a single  bright  Cuyp  in  aspect?  i™ 
the  world,  which,  taken  as  a whole,  does  terfered  with  - by 


250 


OF  TRUTH  OF  TONE. 


painful  contrast  with  the  one  standing  beside  it,  the  flank 
of  the  standing  one  being  bathed  in  breathing  sunshine, 
and  the  reposing  one  laid  in  with  as  dead,  opaque,  and  life- 
less brown  as  ever  came  raw  from  a novice’s  pallet.  And 
again,  in  that  marked  83,  while  the  figures  on  the  right 
are  walking  in  the  most  precious  light,  and  those  just 
beyond  them  in  the  distance  leave  a furlong  or  two  of 
pure  visible  sunbeams  between  us  and  them,  the  cows  in 
the  centre  are  entirely  deprived,  poor  things,  of  both 
light  and  air.  And  these  failing  parts,  though  they 
often  escape  the  eye  when  we  are  near  the  picture  and 
able  to  dwell  upon  what  is  beautiful  in  it,  yet  so  injure 
its  whole  effect  that  I question  if  there  be  many  Cuyps 
in  which  vivid  colors  occur,  which  will  not  lose  their 
effect,  and  become  cold  and  flat  at  a distance  of  ten  or 
twelve  paces,  retaining  their  influence  only  when  the  eye 
is  close  enough  to  rest  on  the  right  parts  without  includ- 
ing the  whole.  Take,  for  instance,  the  large  one  in  our 
National  Gallery,  seen  from  the  opposite  door,  where  the 
black  cow  appears  a great  deal  nearer  than  the  dogs,  and 
the  golden  tones  of  the  distance  look  like  a sepia  draw- 
ing rather  than  like  sunshine,  owing  chiefly  to  the  utter 
want  of  aerial  grays  indicated  through  them. 

Now,  there  is  no  instance  in  the  works  of  Turner  of 
anything  so  faithful  and  imitative  of  sunshine  as  the  best 
§20.  Turner  i s parts  of  Cuyp  ; but  at  the  same  time,  there 
parts3— S^more  is  not  a single  vestige  of  the  same  kind  of 
so  m the  whole.  solecism.  It  is  true,  that  in  his  fondness 
for  color,  Turner  is  in  the  habit  of  allowing  excessively 
cold  fragments  in  his  warmest  pictures  ; but  these  are 
never,  observe,  warm  colors  with  no  light  upon  them, 
useless  as  contrasts  while  they  are  discords  in  the  tone ; 
but  they  are  bits  of  the  very  coolest  tints,  partially  re- 
moved from  the  general  influence,  and  exquisitely  valu- 
able as  color,  though,  with  all  deference  be  it  spoken,  I 
think  them  sometimes  slightly  destructive  of  what  would 


OF  TRUTH  OF  TONE . 


251 


otherwise  be  perfect  tone.  Eor  instance,  the  two  blue 
and  white  stripes  on  the  drifting  flag  of  the  Slave  Ship, 
are,  I think,  the  least  degree  too  purely  cool.  I think 
both  the  blue  and  white  would  be  impossible  under  such 
a light;  and  in  the  same  way  the  white  parts  of  the 
dress  of  the  Napoleon  interfered  by  their  coolness  with 
the  perfectly  managed  warmth  of  all  the  rest  of  the  pict- 
ure. But  both  these  lights  are  reflexes,  and  it  is  nearly 
impossible  to  say  what  tones  may  be  assumed  even  by 
the  warmest  light  reflected  from  a cool  surface ; so  that 
we  cannot  actually  convict  these  parts  of  falsehood,  and 
though  we  should  have  liked  the  tone  of  the  picture 
better  had  they  been  slightly  warmer  we  cannot  but  like 
the  color  of  the  picture  better  with  them  as  they  are ; 
while  Cuyp’s  failing  portions  are  not  only  evidently  and 
demonstrably  false,  being  in  direct  light,  but  are  as  dis- 
agreeable in  color  as  false  in  tone,  and  injurious  to  every- 
thing near  them.  And  the  best  proof  of  the  grammatical 
accuracy  of  the  tones  of  Turner  is  in  the  perfect  and  un- 
changing influence  of  all  his  pictures  at  any  distance. 
We  approach  only  to  follow  the  sunshine  into  every 
cranny  of  the  leafage,  and  retire  only  to  feel  it  diffused 
over  the  scene,  the  whole  picture  glowing  like  a sun  or 
star  at  whatever  distance  we  stand,  and  lighting  the  air 
between  us  and  it ; while  many  even  of  the  best  pictures 
of  Claude  must  be  looked  close  into  to  be  felt,  and  lose 
light  every  foot  that  we  retire.  The  smallest  of  the  three 
seaports  in  the  National  Gallery  is  valuable  and  right  in 
tone  when  wre  are  close  to  it ; but  ten  yards  off,  it  is  all 
brick- dust,  offensively  and  evidently  false  in  its  whole 
hue. 

The  comparison  of  Turner  with  Cuyp  and  Claude  may 
sound  strange  in  most  ears ; but  this  is  chiefly  because 
we  are  not  in  the  habit  of  analyzing  and  § 21  The  power 
dwelling  upon  those  difficult  and  daring  jSja^mbs^of 
passages  of  the  modern  master  which  do  tones- 


202 


OF  TRUTH  OF  TONE. 


not  at  first  appeal  to  our  ordinary  notions  of  truth,  ow- 
ing to  his  habit  of  uniting  two,  three,  or  even  more  sep- 
arate tones  in  the  same  composition.  In  this  also  he 
strictly  follows  nature,  for  wherever  climate  changes, 
tone  changes,  and  the  climate  changes  with  every  200 
feet  of  elevation,  so  that  the  upper  clouds  are  always 
different  in  tone  from  the  lower  ones,  these  from  the  rest 
of  the  landscape,  and  in  all  probability,  some  part  of  the 
horizon  from  the  rest.  And  when  nature  allows  this  in 
a high  degree,  as  in  her  most  gorgeous  effects  she  always 
will,  she  does  not  herself  impress  at  once  with  intensity 
of  tone,  as  in  the  deep  and  quiet  yellows  of  a July  even- 
ing, but  rather  with  the  magnificence  and  variety  of  asso- 
ciated color,  in  which,  if  we  give  time  and  attention  to 
it,  we  shall  gradually  find  the  solemnity  and  the  depth 
of  twenty  tones  instead  of  one.  Now  in  Turner’s  power 
of  associating  cold  with  warm  light,  no  one  has  ever  ap- 
proached, or  even  ventured  into  the  same  field  with  him. 
The  old  masters,  content  with  one  simple  tone,  sacri- 
ficed to  its  unity  all  the  exquisite  gradations  and  varied 
touches  of  relief  and  change  by  which  nature  unites  her 
hours  with  each  other.  They  gave  the  warmth  of  the 
sinking  sun,  overwhelming  all  things  in  its  gold ; but 
they  did  not  give  those  gray  passages  about  the  horizon 
where,  seen  through  its  dying  light,  the  cool  and  the 
gloom  of  night  gather  themselves  for  their  victory. 
Whether  it  was  in  them  impotence  or  judgment,  it  is 
not  for  me  to  decide.  I have  only  to  point  to  the  daring 
of  Turner  in  this  respect,  as  something  to  which  art 
affords  no  matter  of  comparison,  as  that  in  which  the 
mere  attempt  is,  in  itself,  superiority.  Take  the  evening 
effect  with  the  Temeraire.  That  picture  will  not,  at  the 
first  glance,  deceive  as  a piece  of  actual  sunlight ; but 
this  is  because  there  is  in  it  more  than  sunlight,  because 
under  the  blazing  veil  of  vaulted  fire  which  lights  the 
vessel  on  her  last  path,  there  is  a blue,  deep,  desolate 


OF  TRUTH  OF  TONE. 


253 


hollow  of  darkness,  out  of  which  you  can  hear  the  voice 
of  the  night  wind,  and  the  dull  boom  of  the  disturbed 
sea;  because  the  cold,  deadly  shadows  of  the  twilight 
are  gathering  through  every  sunbeam,  and  moment  by 
moment  as  you  look,  you  will  fancy  some  new  film  and 
faintness  of  the  night  has  risen  over  the  vastness  of  the 
departing  form. 

And  if,  in  effects  of  this  kind,  time  be  taken  to  dwell 
upon  the  individual  tones,  and  to  study  the  laws  of  their 
reconcilement,  there  will  be  found  in  the  g 22  Eecapitl,la. 
recent  Academy  pictures  of  this  great  artist  tion- 
a mass  of  various  truth  to  which  nothing  can  be  brought 
for  comparison,  which  stands  not  only  unrivalled,  but 
uncontended  with,  and  which,  when  in  carrying  out  it 
may  be  inferior  to  some  of  the  picked  passages  of  the 
old  masters,  is  so  through  deliberate  choice  rather  to 
suggest  a multitude  of  truths  than  to  imitate  one,  and 
through  a strife  with  difficulties  of  effect  of  which  art 
can  afford  no  parallel  example.  Nay,  in  the  next  chap- 
ter, respecting  color,  we  shall  see  farther  reason  for 
doubting  the  truth  of  Claude,  Cuyp,  and  Poussin,  in  tone, 
— reason  so  palpable  that  if  these  were  all  that  were  to 
be  contended  with,  I should  scarcely  have  allowed  any 
inferiority  in  Turner  whatsoever ; * but  I allow  it,  not  so 
much  with  reference  to  the  deceptive  imitations  of 
sunlight,  wrought  out  with  desperate  exaggerations  of 
shade,  of  the  professed  landscape  painters,  as  with  refer- 
ence to  the  glory  of  Rubens,  the  glow  of  Titian,  the  sil- 
ver tenderness  of  Cagliari,  and  perhaps  more  than  all  to 

* We  must  not  leave  the  subject  of  tone  without  alluding  to  the 
works  of  the  late  George  Barrett,  which  afford  glorious  and  exalted 
passages  of  light ; and  John  Varley,  who,  though  less  truthful  in  his 
aim,  was  frequently  deep  in  his  feeling.  Some  of  the  sketches  of  Do 
Wint  are  also  admirable  in  this  respect.  As  for  our  oil  pictures,  the 
less  that  is  said  about  them  the  better.  Callcott  has  the  truest  aim  ; 
but  not  having  any  eye  for  color,  it  is  impossible  for  him  to  succeed 


254 


OF  TRUTH  OF  TONE. 


the  precious  and  pure  passages  of  intense  feeling  and 
heavenly  light,  holy  and  undefiled,  and  glorious  with  the 
changeless  passion  of  eternity,  which  sanctify  with  their 
shadeless  peace  the  deep  and  noble  conceptions  of  the 
early  school  of  Italy, — of  Fra  Bartolomeo,  Perugino,  and 
the  early  mind  of  Bafiaelle. 


CHAPTER  H. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 

There  is,  in  tlie  first  room  of  the  National  Gallery,  a 
landscape  attributed  to  Gaspar  Poussin,  called  some- 
times Aricia,  sometimes  Le  or  La  Riccia,  g L observations 
according  to  the  fancy  of  catalogue  print-  Lanc- 

ers. Whether  it  can  be  supposed  to  re-  en- 
semble the  ancient  Aricia,  now  La  Riccia,  close  to  Albano, 
I will  not  take  upon  me  to  determine,  seeing  that  most  of 
the  towns  of  these  old  masters  are  quite  as  like  one  place 
as  another ; but,  at  any  rate,  it  is  a town  on  a hill,  wooded 
with  two-and-thirty  bushes,  of  very  uniform  size,  and 
possessing  about  the  same  number  of  leaves  each.  These 
bushes  are  all  painted  in  with  one  dull  opaque  brown, 
becoming  very  slightly  greenish  towards  the  lights,  and 
discover  in  one  place  a bit  of  rock,  which  of  course 
would  in  nature  have  been  cool  and  gray  beside  the 
lustrous  hues  of  foliage,  and  which,  therefore,  being 
moreover  completely  in  shade,  is  consistently  and  scien- 
tifically painted  of  a very  clear,  pretty,  and  positive 
brick-red,  the  only  thing  like  color  in  the  picture.  The 
foreground  is  a piece  of  road,  which  in  order  to  make 
allowance  for  its  greater  nearness,  for  its  being  com- 
pletely in  light,  and,  it  may  be  presumed,  for  the  quan- 
tity of  vegetation  usually  present  on  carriage-roads,  is 
given  in  a very  cool  green  gray,  and  the  truth  of  the 
picture  is  completed  by  a number  of  dots  in  the  sky  on 
the  right,  with  a stalk  to  them,  of  a sober  and  similar 
brown. 


256 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR . 


Not  long*  ago,  I was  slowly  descending  this  very  bit 
of  carriage-road,  the  first  turn  after  you  leave  Al- 

0 o 4 bano,  not  a little  impeded  by  the  worthy 

with  the  actual  successors  of  the  ancient  prototypes  of 

Veiento.*  It  had  been  wild  weather  when 

1 left  Rome,  and  all  across  the  Campagna  the  clouds 
were  sweeping  in  sulphurous  blue,  with  a clap  of  thun- 
der or  two,  and  breaking  gleams  of  sun  along  the  Clau- 
dian  aqueduct  lighting  up  the  infinity  of  its  arches  like 
the  bridge  of  chaos.  But  as  I climbed  the  long  slope  of 
the  Alban  mount,  the  storm  swept  finally  to  the  north, 
and  the  noble  outline  of  the  domes  of  Albano  and 
graceful  darkness  of  its  ilex  grove  rose  against  pure 
streaks  of  alternate  blue  and  amber,  the  upper  sky  grad- 
ually flushing  through  the  last  fragments  of  rain-cloud 
in  deep,  palpitating  azure,  half  ether  and  half  dew.  The 
noon-day  sun  came  slanting  down  the  rocky  slopes  of 
La  Riccia,  and  its  masses  of  entangled  and  tall  foliage, 
whose  autumnal  tints  were  mixed  with  the  wet  verdure 
of  a thousand  evergreens,  were  penetrated  with  it  as 
with  rain.  I cannot  call  it  color,  it  was  conflagration. 
Purple,  and  crimson,  and  scarlet,  like  the  curtains  of 
God’s  tabernacle,  the  rejoicing  trees  sank  into  the  valley 
in  showers  of  light,  every  separate  leaf  quivering  with 
buoyant  and  burning  life ; each,  as  it  turned  to  reflect  or 
to  transmit  the  sunbeam,  first  a torch  and  then  an  emer- 
ald. Far  up  into  the  recesses  of  the  valley,  the  green 
vistas  arched  like  the  hollows  of  mighty  waves  of  some 
crystalline  sea,  with  the  arbutus  flowers  dashed  along 
their  flanks  for  foam,  and  silver  flakes  of  orange  spray 
tossed  into  the  air  around  them,  breaking  over  the  gray 
walls  of  rock  into  a thousand  separate  stars,  fading  and 
kindling  alternately  as  the  weak  wind  lifted  and  let 

* ‘ ‘ Csecus  adulator — 

Dignus  Aricinos  qui  mendicaret  ad  axes, 

Blandaque  dcvexae  jaetaret  basia  rhedas.” 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR . 


25 1 


them  fall.  Every  glade  of  grass  burned  like  the  golden 
floor  of  heaven,  opening  in  sudden  gleams  as  the  foli- 
age broke  and  closed  above  it,  as  sheet-lightning  opens 
in  a cloud  at  sunset ; the  motionless  masses  of  dark  rock 
— dark  though  flushed  with  scarlet  lichen,— casting  their 
quiet  shadows  across  its  restless  radiance,  the  fountain 
underneath  them  filling  its  marble  hollow  with  blue  mist 
and  fitful  sound,  and  over  all — the  multitudinous  bars  of 
amber  and  rose,  the  sacred  clouds  that  have  no  darkness, 
and  only  exist  to  illumine,  were  seen  in  fathomless  inter- 
vals between  the  solemn  and  orbed  repose  of  the  stone 
pines,  passing  to  lose  themselves  in  the  last,  white,  blind- 
ing lustre  of  the  measureless  line  where  the  Campagna 
melted  into  the  blaze  of  the  sea. 

Tell  me  who  is  likest  this,  Poussin  or  Turner  ? Not 
in  his  most  daring  and  dazzling  efforts  could  Turner 
himself  come  near  it ; but  you  could  not  at  § 3.  Turner  him- 
the  time  have  thought  or  remembered  the  brilliancy f to  °na£ 
•work  of  any  other  man  as  having  the  re-  ure' 
motest  hue  or  resemblance  of  what  you  saw.  Nor  am  I 
speaking  of  what  is  uncommon  or  unnatural ; there  is  no 
climate,  no  place,  and  scarcely  an  hour,  in  which  nature 
does  not  exhibit  color  which  no  mortal  effort  can  imitate 
or  approach.  For  all  our  artificial  pigments  are,  even 
when  seen  under  the  same  circumstances,  dead  and  light- 
less beside  her  living  color ; the  green  of  a growing  leaf, 
the  scarlet  of  a fresh  flower,  no  art  nor  expedient  can 
reach ; but  in  addition  to  this,  nature  exhibits  her  hues 
under  an  intensity  of  sunlight  which  trebles  their  brill- 
iancy, while  the  painter,  deprived  of  this  splendid  aid, 
works  still  with  what  is  actually  a gray  shadow  compared 
to  the  force  of  nature’s  color.  Take  a blade  of  grass  and 
a scarlet  flower,  and  place  them  so  as  to  receive  sun- 
light beside  the  brightest  canvas  that  ever  left  Turner’s 
easel,  and  the  picture  will  be  extinguished.  So  far  from 
out-facing  nature,  he  does  not,  as  far  as  mere  vividness 
17 


258 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 


of  color  goes,  one-half  reach  her ; — but  does  he  use  this 
brilliancy  of  color  on  objects  to  which  it  does  not  properly 
belong  ? Let  us  compare  his  works  in  this  respect  with 
a few  instances  from  the  old  masters. 

There  is,  on  the  left  hand  side  of  Salvator’s  Mercury 
and  the  Woodman  in  our  National  Gallery,  something, 
§ 4.  Impossible  without  doubt  intended  for  a rocky  moun- 
Titian ; tain,  in  the  middle  distance,  near  enough 

for  all  its  fissures  and  crags  to  be  distinctly  visible,  or, 
rather,  for  a great  many  awkward  scratches  of  the  brush 
over  it  to  be  visible,  which,  though  not  particularly  rep- 
resentative either  of  one  thing  or  another,  are  without 
doubt  intended  to  be  symbolical  of  rocks.  Now  no 
mountain  in  full  light,  and  near  enough  for  its  details  of 
crag  to  be  seen,  is  without  great  variety  of  delicate  color. 
Salvator  has  painted  it  throughout  without  one  instant 
of  variation ; but  this,  I suppose,  is  simplicity  and  gener- 
alization;— let  it  pass:  but  what  is  the  color ? Pure  shy 
blue , without  one  grain  of  gray,  or  any  modifying  hue 
whatsoever ; — the  same  brush  which  had  just  given  the 
bluest  parts  of  the  sky,  has  been  more  loaded  at  the  same 
part  of  the  pallet,  and  the  whole  mountain  thrown  in 
with  unmitigated  ultramarine.  Now  mountains  only  can 
become  pure  blue  when  there  is  so  much  air  between  us 
and  them  that  they  become  mere  flat,  dark  shades,  every 
detail  being  totally  lost : they  become  blue  when  they 
become  air,  and  not  till  then.  Consequently  this  part  of 
Salvator’s  painting,  being  of  hills  perfectly  clear  and 
near,  with  all  their  details  visible,  is,  as  far  as  color  is 
concerned,  broad,  bold  falsehood — the  direct  assertion  of 
direct  impossibility. 

In  the  whole  range  of  Turner’s  works,  recent  or  of  old 
date,  you  will  not  find  an  instance  of  anything  near  enough 
to  have  details  visible,  painted  in  sky  blue.  Wherever 
Turner  gives  blue,  there  he  gives  atmosphere ; it  is  air, 
not  object.  Blue  he  gives  to  his  sea;  so  does  nature 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 


259 


blue  he  gives,  sapphire  deep,  to  his  extreme  distance ; 
so  does  nature;— blue  he  gives  to  the  misty  shadows 
and  hollows  of  his  hills;  so  does  nature:  but  blue  he 
gives  not , where  detailed  and  illumined  surface  are  visi- 
ble ; as  he  comes  into  light  and  character,  so  he  breaks 
into  warmth  and  varied  hue ; nor  is  there  in  one  of  his 
works,  and  I speak  of  the  Academy  pictures  especially, 
one  touch  of  cold  color  which  is  not  to  be  accounted  for, 
and  proved  right  and  full  of  meaning. 

I do  not  say  that  Salvator’s  distance  is  not  artist-like ; 
both  in  that,  and  in  the  yet  more  glaringly  false  distances 
of  Titian  above  alluded  to,  and  in  hundreds  of  others  of 
equal  boldness  of  exaggeration,  I can  take  delight,  and 
perhaps  should  be  sorry  to  see  them  other  than  they  are ; 
but  it  is  somewhat  singular  to  hear  people  talking  of 
Turner’s  exquisite  care  and  watchfulness  in  color  as  false, 
while  they  receive  such  cases  of  preposterous  and  au- 
dacious fiction  with  the  most  generous  and  single  cre- 
dulity. 

Again,  in  the  upper  sky  of  the  picture  of  Nicolas 
Poussin,  before  noticed,  the  clouds  are  of  a very  fine 
clear  olive-green,  about  the  same  tint  as  § 5 Pousshlj  and 
the  brightest  parts  of  the  trees  beneath  ciaude- 
them.  They  cannot  have  altered,  (or  else  the  trees  must 
have  been  painted  in  gray),  for  the  hue  is  harmonious 
and  well  united  with  the  rest  of  the  picture,  and  the 
blue  and  white  in  the  centre  of  the  sky  are  still  fresh  and 
pure.  Now  a green  sky  in  open  and  illumined  distance 
is  very  frequent,  and  very  beautiful  ; but  rich  olive-green 
clouds,  as  far  as  I am  acquainted  with  nature,  are  a piece 
of  color  in  which  she  is  not  apt  to  indulge.  You  will  be 
puzzled  to  show  me  such  a thing  in  the  recent  works  of 
Turner.*  Again,  take  any  important  group  of  trees,  I 

* There  is  perhaps  nothing  more  characteristic  of  a great  colorist 
than  his  power  of  using  greens  in  strange  places  without  their  being 
felt  as  such,  or  at  least  than  a constant  preference  of  green  gray  to 


260 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 


do  not  care  whose — Claude’s,  Salvator’s,  or  Poussin’s— 
with  lateral  light  (that  in  the  Marriage  of  Isaac  and  Be- 
becca,  or  Gaspar’s  Sacrifice  of  Isaac,  for  instance :)  Can 
it  be  seriously  supposed  that  those  murky  browns  and 
melancholy  greens  are  representative  of  the  tints  of 
leaves  under  full  noonday  sun  ? I know  that  you  cannot 
help  looking  upon  all  these  pictures  as  pieces  of  dark 
relief  against  a light  wholly  proceeding  from  the  dis- 
tances ; but  they  are  nothing  of  the  kind — they  are  noon 
and  morning  effects  with  full  lateral  light.  Be  so  kind 
as  to  match  the  color  of  a leaf  in  the  sun  (the  darkest 
you  like)  as  nearly  as  you  can,  and  bring  your  matched 
color  and  set  it  beside  one  of  these  group  of  trees,  and 
take  a blade  of  common  grass,  and  set  it  beside  any  part 
of  the  fullest  light  of  their  foregrounds,  and  then  talk 
about  the  truth  of  color  of  the  old  masters ! 

And  let  not  arguments  respecting  the  sublimity  or  fidel- 
ity of  impression  be  brought  forward  here.  I have  noth- 
ing whatever  to  do  with  this  at  present.  I am  not  talking 
about  what  is  sublime,  but  about  what  is  true.  People 
attack  Turner  on  this  ground they  never  speak  of 
beauty  or  sublimity  with  respect  to  him,  but  of  nature 
and  truth,  and  let  them  support  their  own  favorite 
masters  on  the  same  grounds.  Perhaps  I may  have  the 
very  deepest  veneration  for  the  feeling  of  the  old  mas- 
ters, but  I must  not  let  it  influence  me  now — my  business 
is  to  match  colors,  not  to  talk  sentiment.  Neither  let 
it  be  said  that  I am  going  too  much  into  details,  and 
that  general  truths  may  be  obtained  by  local  falsehood. 

purple  gray.  And  this  hue  of  Poussin’s  clouds  would  have  been  per- 
fectly agreeable  and  allowable,  had  there  been  gold  or  crimson  enough 
in  the  rest  of  the  picture  to  have  thrown  it  into  gray.  It  is  only  be- 
cause the  lower  clouds  are  pure  white  and  blue,  and  because  the  trees 
are  of  the  same  color  as  the  clouds,  that  the  cloud  color  becomes  false. 
There  is  a fine  instance  of  a sky,  green  in  itself,  but  turned  gray  by 
the  opposition  of  warm  color,  in  Turner’s  Devonport  with  the  Dock- 
yards. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 


261 


Truth  is  only  to  be  measured  by  close  comparison  of  act- 
ual facts ; we  may  talk  forever  about  it  in  generals,  and 
prove  nothing.  We  cannot  tell  what  effect  falsehood  may 
produce  on  this  or  that  person,  but  we  can  very  well  tell 
what  is  false  and  what  is  not,  and  if  it  produce  on  our 
senses  the  effect  of  truth,  that  only  demonstrates  their 
imperfection  and  inaccuracy,  and  need  of  cultivation. 
Turner’s  color  is  glaring  to  one  person’s  sensations,  and 
beautiful  to  another’s.  This  proves  nothing.  Poussin’s 
color  is  right  to  one,  soot  to  another.  This  proves  noth- 
ing. There  is  no  means  of  arriving  at  any  conclusion 
but  close  comparison  of  both  with  the  known  and  de- 
monstrable hues  of  nature,  and  this  comparison  will  in- 
variably turn  Claude  or  Poussin  into  blackness,  and  even 
Turner  into  gray. 

Whatever  depth  of  gloom  may  seem  to  invest  the  ob- 
jects of  a real  landscape,  yet  a window  with  that  land- 
scape seen  through  it,  will  invariably  appear  a broad 
space  of  light  as  compared  with  the  shade  of  the  room 
walls ; and  this  single  circumstance  may  prove  to  us  both 
the  intensity  and  the  diffusion  of  daylight  in  open  air, 
and  the  necessity,  if  a picture  is  to  be  truthful  in  effect 
of  color,  that  it  should  tell  as  a broad  space  of  graduated 
illumination — not,  as  do  those  of  the  old  masters,  as  a 
patchwork  of  black  shades.  Their  works  are  nature  in 
mourning  weeds, — ovS’  iv  tjXlu)  KaOap (2  TeOpapL/Hvoi,  a A.  A.’  VI TO 


(TvpLfiLyeL  (TKLa, 

It  is  true  that  there  are,  here  and  there,  in  the  Acad- 
emy pictures,  passages  in  which  Turner  has  translated 
the  unattainable  intensity  of  one  tone  of  . e „ m 
color,  into  the  attainable  pitch  of  a higher  translation  of  coi- 
one : the  golden  green  for  instance,  of  in- 
tense sunshine  on  verdure,  into  pure  yellowy  because  he 
knows  it  to  be  impossible,  with  any  mixture  of  blue 
whatsoever,  to  give  faithfully  its  relative  intensity  of 
light,  and  Turner  always  will  have  his  light  and  shade 


262 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 


right,  whatever  it  costs  him  in  color.  But  he  does  this 
in  rare  cases,  and  even  then  over  very  small  spaces ; and  I 
should  be  obliged  to  his  critics  if  they  would  go  out  to 
some  warm,  mossy  green  bank  in  full  summer  sunshine, 
and  try  to  reach  its  tone ; and  when  they  find,  as  find  they 
will,  Indian  yellow  and  chrome  look  dark  beside  it,  let 
them  tell  me  candidly  which  is  nearest  truth,  the  gold 
of  Turner,  or  the  mourning  and  murky  olive  browns  and 
verdigris  greens  in  which  Claude,  with  the  industry  and 
intelligence  of  a Sevres  china  painter,  drags  the  labo- 
rious bramble  leaves  over  his  childish  foreground. 

But  it  is  singular  enough  that  the  chief  attacks  on 
Turner  for  overcharged  brilliancy,  are  made,  not  when 
§ t.  Notice  of  ef-  there  could  by  any  possibility  be  any 

fects  in  which  no.  „ , . ..  . . , . , 

brilliancy  of  art  chance  oi  his  outstepping  nature,  but  when 

can  even  approach  , , i « 

that  of  reality.  he  has  taken  subjects  which  no  colors  ot 
earth  could  ever  vie  with  or  reach,  such,  for  instance,  as 
his  sunsets  among  the  high  clouds.  When  I come  to 
speak  of  skies,  I shall  point  out  what  divisions,  pro- 
portioned to  their  elevation,  exist  in  the  character  of 
clouds.  It  is  the  highest  region, — that  exclusively 
characterized  by  white,  filmy,  multitudinous,  and  quiet 
clouds,  arranged  in  bars,  or  streaks,  or  flakes,  of  which  I 
speak  at  present,  a region  which  no  landscape  painters 
have  ever  made  one  effort  to  represent,  except  Rubens 
and  Turner — the  latter  taking  it  for  his  most  favorite 
and  frequent  study.  Now  we  have  been  speaking 
hitherto  of  what  is  constant  and  necessary  in  nature,  of 
the  ordinary  effects  of  daylight  on  ordinary  colors,  and 
we  repeat  again,  that  no  gorgeousness  of  the  pallet  can 
reach  even  these.  But  it  is  a widely  different  thing 
when  nature  herself  takes  a coloring  fit,  and  does  some- 
thing extraordinary,  something  really  to  exhibit  her 
power.  She  has  a thousand  ways  and  means  of  rising 
above  herself,  but  incomparably  the  noblest  manifesta- 
tions of  her  capability  of  color  are  in  these  sunsets 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 


263 


among  the  high  clouds.  I speak  especially  of  the 
moment  before  the  sun  sinks,  when  his  light  turns  pure 
rose-color,  and  when  this  light  falls  upon  a zenith 
covered  with  countless  cloud-forms  of  inconceivable 
delicacy,  threads  and  flakes  of  vapor,  which  would  in 
common  daylight  be  pure  snow  white,  and  which 
give  therefore  fair  field  to  the  tone  of  light.  There  is 
then  no  limit  to  the  multitude,  and  no  check  to  the  in- 
tensity of  the  hues  assumed.  The  whole  sky  from  the 
zenith  to  the  horizon  becomes  one  molten,  mantling  sea 
of  color  and  fire  ; every  black  bar  turns  into  massy  gold, 
every  ripple  and  wave  into  unsullied,  shadowless,  crim- 
son, and  purple,  and  scarlet,  and  colors  for  which  there 
are  no  words  in  language,  and  no  ideas  in  the  mind, — 
things  which  can  only  be  conceived  while  they  are 
visible, — the  intense  hollow  blue  of  the  upper  sky  melt- 
ing through  it  all, — showing  here  deep,  and  pure,  and 
lightless,  there,  modulated  by  the  filmy,  formless  body 
of  the  transparent  vapor  till  it  is  lost  imperceptibly  in 
its  crimson  and  gold.  Now  there  is  no  connection,  no 
one  link  of  association  or  resemblance,  between  those 
skies  and  the  work  of  any  mortal  hand  but  Turner’s. 
He  alone  has  followed  nature  in  these  her  highest 
efforts  ; he  follows  her  faithfully,  but  far  behind  ; follows 
at  such  a distance  below  her  intensity  that  the  Napoleon 
of  last  year’s  exhibition,  and  the  Temeraire  of  the  year 
before,  would  look  colorless  and  cold  if  the  eye  came 
upon  them  after  one  of  nature’s  sunsets  among  the  high 
clouds.  But  there  are  a thousand  reasons  § 8>  Eeasonsfor 
why  this  should  not  be  believed.  The  ^uiity1  o?1theUob- 
concurrence  of  circumstances  necessary  to  fpe^'to  W/fr 
produce  the  sunsets  of  which  I speak  does  representation, 
not  take  place  above  five  or  six  times  in  the  summer,  and 
then  only  for  a space  of  from  five  to  ten  minutes,  just  as 
the  sun  reaches  the  horizon.  Considering  how  seldom 
people  think  of  looking  for  sunset  at  all,  and  how 


264 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 


seldom,  if  they  do,  they  are  in  a position  from  which  it 
can  be  fully  seen,  the  chances  that  their  attention  should 
be  awake,  and  their  position  favorable,  during  these  few 
flying  instants  of  the  year,  is  almost  as  nothing.  What 
can  the  citizen,  who  can  see  only  the  red  light  on  the 
canvas  of  the  wagon  at  the  end  of  the  street,  and  the 
crimson  color  of  the  bricks  of  his  neighbor’s  chimney, 
know  of  the  flood  of  fire  which  deluges  the  sky  from  the 
horizon  to  the  zenith  ? What  can  even  the  quiet  inhab- 
itant of  the  English  lowlands,  whose  scene  for  the  mani- 
festation of  the  fire  of  heaven  is  limited  to  the  tops  of 
hayricks,  and  the  rooks’  nests  in  the  old  elm-trees,  know 
of  the  mighty  passages  of  splendor  which  are  tossed 
from  Alp  to  Alp  over  the  azure  of  a thousand  miles  of 
champaign  ? Even  granting  the  constant  vigor  of  ob- 
servation, and  supposing  the  possession  of  such  impos- ' 
sible  knowledge,  it  needs  but  a moment’s  reflection  to 
prove  how  incapable  the  memory  is  of  retaining  for  any 
time  the  distinct  image  of  the  sources  even  of  its  most 
vivid  impressions.  WTiat  recollection  have  we  of  the 
sunsets  which  delighted  us  last  year  ? We  may  know 
that  they  were  magnificent,  or  glowing,  but  no  distinct 
image  of  color  or  form  is  retained — nothing  of  whose 
degree  (for  the  great  difficulty  with  the  memory  is  to  re- 
tain, not  facts,  but  degrees  of  fact)  we  could  be  so  cer- 
tain as  to  say  of  anything  now  presented  to  us,  that  it  is 
like  it.  If  we  did  say  so,  we  should  be  wrong ; for  we 
may  be  quite  certain  that  the  energy  of  an  impression 
fades  from  the  memory,  and  becomes  more  and  more  in- 
distinct every  day ; and  thus  we  compare  a faded  and  in- 
distinct image  with  the  decision  and  certainty  of  one 
present  to  the  senses.  How  constantly  do  we  affirm  that 
the  thunder-storm  of  last  week  was  the  most  terrible  one 
we  ever  saw  in  our  lives,  because  we  compare  it,  not  with 
the  thunder-storm  of  last  year,  but  with  the  faded  and 
feeble  recollection  of  it.  And  so,  when  we  enter  an 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 


265 


exhibition,  as  we  have  no  definite  standard  of  truth  be- 
fore us,  our  feelings  are  toned  down  and  subdued  to  the 
quietness  of  color  which  is  all  that  human  power  can 
ordinarily  attain  to ; and  when  we  turn  to  a piece  of 
higher  and  closer  truth,  approaching  the  pitch  of  the 
color  of  nature,  but  to  which  we  are  not  guided,  as  we 
should  be  in  nature,  by  corresponding  gradations  of 
light  everywhere  around  us,  but  which  is  isolated  and 
cut  off  suddenly  by  a frame  and  a wall,  and  surrounded 
by  darkness  and  coldness,  what  can  we  expect  but  that  it 
should  surprise  and  shock  the  feelings  ? Suppose,  where 
the  Napoleon  hung  in  the  Academy  last  § 9.  color  of  the 
year,  there  could  have  been  left,  instead,  NaP°leon- 
an  opening  in  the  wall,  and  through  that  opening,  in  the 
midst  of  the  obscurity  of  the  dim  room  and  the  smoke- 
laden atmosphere,  there  could  suddenly  have  been 
poured  the  full  glory  of  a tropical  sunset,  reverberated 
from  the  sea : How  would  you  have  shrunk,  blinded, 

from  its  scarlet  and  intolerable  lightnings ! What  pict- 
ure in  the  room  would  not  have  been  blackness  after  it  ? 
And  why  then  do  you  blame  Turner  because  he  dazzles 
you  ? Hoes  not  the  falsehood  rest  with  those  who  do 
not?  There  was  not  one  hue  in  this  whole  picture 
which  was  not  far  below  what  nature  would  have  used  in 
the  same  circumstances,  nor  was  there  one  inharmonious 
or  at  variance  with  the  rest ; — the  stormy  blood-red  of 
the  horizon,  the  scarlet  of  the  breaking  sunlight,  the 
rich  crimson  browns  of  the  wet  and  illumined  sea-weed ; 
the  pure  gold  and  purple  of  the  upper  sky,  and,  shed 
through  it  all,  the  deep  passage  of  solemn  blue,  where 
the  cold  moonlight  fell  on  one  pensive  spot  of  the  limit- 
less shore — all  were  given  with  harmony  as  perfect  as 
their  color  was  intense  ; and  if,  instead  of  passing,' "as  I 
doubt  not  you  did,  in  the  hurry  of  your  unreflecting 
prejudice,  you  had  paused  but  so  much  as  one  quarter  of 
an  hour  before  the  picture,  you  would  have  found  the 


266 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 


sense  of  air  and  space  blended  with  every  line,  and 
breathing*  in  every  cloud,  and  every  color  instinct  and 
radiant  with  visible,  glowing,  absorbing  light. 

It  is  to  be  observed,  however,  in  general,  that  where- 
ever  in  brilliant  effects  of  this  kind,  we  approach  to 
anything  like  a true  statement  of  nature’s 
liBcre p fncTbJ  color,  there  must  yet  be  a distinct  differ- 

tween  the  attain-  • n • • i 

able  brilliancy  of  ence  in  the  impression  we  convey,  because 
color  and  light.  we  cannot  approach  her  light.  All  such 

hues  are  usually  given  by  her  with  an  accompanying  in- 
tensity of  sunbeams  which  dazzles  and  overpowers  the 
eye,  so  that  it  cannot  rest  on  the  actual  colors,  nor  under- 
stand what  they  are  ; and  hence  in  art,  in  rendering  all 
effects  of  this  kind,  there  must  be  a want  of  the  ideas  of 
imitation , which  are  the  great  source  of  enjoyment  to  the 
ordinary  observer ; because  we  can  only  give  one  series 
of  truths,  those  of  color,  and  are  unable  to  give  the  ac- 
companying truths  of  light,  so  that  the  more  true  we  are 
in  color,  the  greater,  ordinarily,  will  be  the  discrepancy 
felt  between  the  intensity  of  hue  and  the  feebleness  of 
light.  But  the  painter  who  really  loves  nature  will  not, 
on  this  account,  give  you  a faded  and  feeble  image, 
which  indeed  may  appear  to  you  to  be  right,  because 
your  feelings  can  detect  no  discrepancy  in  its  parts,  but 
which  he  knows  to  derive  its  apparent  truth  from  a 
systematized  falsehood.  No ; he  will  make  you  under- 
stand and  feel  that  art  cannot  imitate  nature — that  where 
it  appears  to  do  so,  it  must  malign  her,  and  mock  her. 
He  will  give  you,  or  state  to  you,  such  truths  as  are  in 
his  power,  completely  and  perfectly ; and  those  which 
he  cannot  give,  he  will  leave  to  your  imagination.  If 
you  are  acquainted  with  nature,  you  will  know  all  he 
has  given  to  be  true,  and  you  will  supply  from  your 
memory  and  from  your  heart  that  life  which  he  cannot 
give.  If  you  are  unacquainted  with  nature,  seek  else- 
where for  whatever  may  happen  to  satisfy  your  feelings  ,• 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR . 


267 


but  do  not  ask  for  the  truth  which  you  would  not  ac- 
knowledge and  could  not  enjoy. 

Nevertheless  the  aim  and  struggle  of  the  artist  must 
always  be  to  do  away  with  this  discrepancy  as  far  as 
the  powers  of  art  admit,  not  by  lowering  his  color,  but 
by  increasing  his  light.  And  it  is  indeed  by  this  that 
the  works  of  Turner  are  peculiarly  distin-  §11  Thigdiscrep_ 
guished  from  those  of  all  other  colorists,  by  ancy  less  m TuV- 

. . . - ner  than  m other 

the  dazzling  intensity,  namely,  of  the  light  colorists, 
which  he  sheds  through  every  hue,  and  which,  far  more 
than  their  brilliant  color,  is  the  real  source  of  their  over- 
powering effect  upon  the  eye,  an  effect  so  reasonably 
made  the  subject  of  perpetual  animadversion,  as  if  the 
sun  which  they  represent  were  quite  a quiet,  and  subdued, 
and  gentle,  and  manageable  luminary,  and  never  dazzled 
anybody,  under  any  circumstances  whatsoever.  I am  fond 
of  standing  by  a bright  Turner  in  the  Academy,  to  listen 
to  the  unintentional  compliments  of  the  crowd — “ What 
a glaring  thing ! ” “I  declare  I can’t  look  at  it ! ” “ Don’t 
it  hurt  your  eyes  ? ” — expressed  as  if  they  were  in  the 
constant  habit  of  looking  the  sun  full  in  the  face,  with  the 
most  perfect  comfort  and  entire  facility  of  vision.  It  is 
curious,  after  hearing  people  malign  some  of  Turner’s 
noble  passages  of  light,  to  pass  to  some  § 12.  its  great  ex- 
really  ungrammatical  and  false  picture  of  at?rUuta^Uto  Ou- 
tlie old  masters,  in  which  we  have  color  bens‘ 
given  without  light.  Take,  for  instance,  the  landscape 
attributed  to  Rubens,  No.  175,  in  the  Dulwich  Gallery. 
I never  have  spoken,  and  I never  will  speak  01  Rubens 
but  with  the  most  reverential  feeling ; and  whatever  im- 
perfections in  his  art  may  have  resulted  from  his  unfor- 
tunate want  of  seriousness  and  incapability  of  true  pas- 
sion, his  calibre  of  mind  was  originally  such  that  I be- 
lieve the  world  may  see  another  Titian  and  another  Raf- 
aelle  before  it  sees  another  Rubens.  But  I have  before 
alluded  to  the  violent  license  he  occasionally  assumes; 


208 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 


and  there  is  an  instance  of  it  in  this  picture  apposite  to 
the  immediate  question.  The  sudden  streak  and  circle  of 
yellow  and  crimson  in  the  middle  of  the  sky  of  that  pict- 
ure, being  the  occurrence  of  a fragment  of  a sunset  color 
in  pure  daylight,  and  in  perfect  isolation,  while  at  the 
same  time  it  is  rather  darker,  when  translated  into  light 
and  shade,  than  brighter  than  the  rest  of  the  sky,  is  a case 
of  such  bold  absurdity,  come  from  whose  pencil  it  may, 
that  if  every  error  which  Turner  has  fallen  into  in  the 
whole  course  of  his  life  were  concentrated  into  one,  that 
one  would  not  equal  it ; and  as  our  connoisseurs  gaze 
upon  this  with  never-ending  approbation,  we  must  not  be 
surprised  that  the  accurate  perceptions  which  thus  take 
delight  in  pure  fiction,  should  consistently  be  disgusted 
by  Turner’s  fidelity  and  truth. 

Hitherto,  however,  we  have  been  speaking  of  vividness 
of  pure  color,  and  showing  that  it  is  used  by  Turner 
§ 13.  Turner  only  where  nature  uses  it,  and  in  no  less  de- 
pTrCe]  orVyri  vTI  gree.  But  we  have  hitherto,  therefore,  been 
color’  speaking  of  a most  limited  and  uncharac- 

teristic portion  of  his  works ; for  Turner,  like  all  great 
colorists,  is  distinguished  not  more  for  his  power  of  daz- 
zling and  overwhelming  the  eye  with  intensity  of  effect, 
than  for  his  power  of  doing  so  by  the  use  of  subdued  and 
gentle  means.  There  is  no  man  living  more  cautious  and 
sparing  in  the  use  of  pure  color  than  Turner.  To  say  that 
he  never  perpetrates  anything  like  the  blue  excrescences 
of  foreground,  or  hills  shot  like  a housekeeper’s  best  silk 
gown,  with  blue  and  red,  which  certain  of  our  celebrated 
artists  consider  the  essence  of  the  sublime,  would  be  but 
a poor  compliment.  I might  as  well  praise  the  portraits 
of  Titian  because  they  have  not  the  grimace  and  paint  of 
a clown  in  a pantomime  ; but  I do  say,  and  say  with  con- 
fidence, that  there  is  scarcely  a landscape  artist  of  the 
present  day,  however  sober  and  lightless  their  effects  may 
look,  who  does  not  employ  more  pure  and  raw  color  than 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 


209 


Turner ; and  that  the  ordinary  tinsel  and  trash,  or  rather 
vicious  and  perilous  stuff,  according  to  the  power  of  the 
mind  producing  it,  with  which  the  walls  of  our  Acade- 
my are  half  covered,  disgracing,  in  weak  hands,  or  in 
more  powerful,  degrading  and  corrupting  our  whole 
school  of  art,  is  based  on  a system  of  color  beside  which 
Turner’s  is  as  Yesta  to  Cotytto — the  chastity  of  fire  to 
the  foulness  of  earth.  Every  picture  of  this  great  color- 
ist has,  in  one  or  two  parts  of  it  (key-notes  of  the  whole), 
points  where  the  system  of  each  individual  color  is  con- 
centrated by  a single  stroke,  as  pure  as  it  can  come  from 
the  pallet ; but  throughout  the  great  space  and  extent  of 
even  the  most  brilliant  of  his  works,  there  will  not  be 
found  a raw  color ; that  is  to  say,  there  is  no  warmth 
which  has  not  gray  in  it,  and  no  blue  which  has  not 
warmth  in  it ; and  the  tints  in  which  he  most  excels  and 
distances  all  other  men,  the  most  cherished  and  inimitable 
portions  of  his  color  are,  as  with  all  perfect  colorists  they 
must  be,  his  grays. 

It  is  instructive  in  this  respect,  to  compare  the  sky  of 
the  Mercury  and  Argus  with  the  various  illustrations  of 
the  serenity,  space,  and  sublimity  naturally  inherent  in 
blue  and  pink,  of  which  every  year’s  exhibition  brings 
forward  enough  and  to  spare.  In  the  Mercury  and 
Argus,  the  pale  and  vaporous  blue  of  the  heated  sky  is 
broken  with  gray  and  pearly  white,  the  gold  color  of  the 
light  warming  it  more  or  less  as  it  approaches  or  retires 
from  the  sun ; but  throughout,  there  is  not  a grain  of 
pure  blue  ; all  is  subdued  and  warmed  at  the  same  time 
by  the  mingling  gray  and  gold,  up  to  the  very  zenith, 
where,  breaking  through  the  flaky  mist,  the  transparent 
and  deep  azure  of  the  sky  is  expressed  with  a single 
crumbling  touch;  the  key-note  of  the  whole  is  given, 
and  every  part  of  it  passes  at  once  far  into  glowing  and 
aerial  space.  The  reader  can  scarcely  fail  to  remember 
at  once  sundry  works  in  contradistinction  to  this,  with 


270 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 


great  names  attached  to  them,  in  which  the  sky  is  a sheer 
piece  of  plumber’s  and  glazier’s  work,  and  should  be 
valued  per  yard,  with  heavy  extra  charge  for  ultra- 
marine. 

Throughout  the  works  of  Turner,  the  same  truthful 
princixDle  of  delicate  and  subdued  color  is  carried  out 
„ with  a care  and  labor  of  which  it  is  diffi- 

§ 14.  The  basis  of  . 

gray,  under  aii  his  cult  to  form  a conception.  He  gives  a dash 

vivjq  hues  A ° 

of  pure  white  for  his  highest  light ; bat 
all  the  other  whites  of  his  picture  are  pearled  down  with 
gray  or  gold.  He  gives  a fold  of  pure  crimson  to  the 
drapery  of  his  nearest  figure,  but  all  his  other  crimsons 
will  be  deepened  with  black,  or  warmed  with  yellow.  In 
one  deep  reflection  of  his  distant  sea,  we  catch  a trace  of 
the  purest  blue ; but  all  the  rest  is  palpitating  with  a 
varied  and  delicate  gradation  of  harmonized  tint,  which 
indeed  looks  vivid  blue  as  a mass,  but  is  only  so  by  op- 
position. It  is  the  most  difficult,  the  most  rare  thing,  to 
find  in  his  works  a definite  space,  however  small,  of  un- 
connected color ; that  is,  either  of  a blue  which  has  noth- 
ing to  connect  it  with  the  warmth,  or  of  a warm  color 
which  has  nothing  to  connect  it  with  the  grays  of  the 
whole ; and  the  result  is  that  there  is  a general  system 
and  under-current  of  gray  pervading  the  whole  of  his 
color,  out  of  which  his  highest  lights,  and  those  local 
touches  of  pure  color,  which  are,  as  I said  before,  the 
key-notes  of  the  picture,  flash  with  the  peculiar  brill- 
iancy and  intensity  in  which  he  stands  alone. 

Intimately  associated  with  this  toning  down  and  connec- 
tion of  the  colors  actually  used,  is  his  inimitable  power 
§ 15.  The  variety  of  varyin £ and  blending  them,  so  as  never 
o?  hifmostSsimpeS  ^ve  a quarter  of  an  inch  of  canvas  with- 
tones-  out  a change  in  it,  a melody  as  well  as  a 

harmony  of  one  kind  or  another.  Observe,  I am  not  at 
present  speaking  of  this  as  artistical  or  desirable  in  itself, 
not  as  a characteristic  of  the  great  colorist,  but  as  the  aim 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 


271 


of  the  simple  follower  of  nature.  For  it  is  strange  to  see 
how  marvellously  nature  varies  the  most  general  and  sim- 
ple of  her  tones.  A mass  of  mountain  seen  against  the 
light  may,  at  first,  appear  all  of  one  blue ; and  so  it  is, 
blue  as  a whole,  by  comparison  with  other  parts  of  the 
landscape.  But  look  how  that  blue  is  made  up.  There 
are  black  shadows  in  it  under  the  crags,  there  are  green 
shadows  along  the  turf,  there  are  gray  half-lights  upon 
the  rocks,  there  are  faint  touches  of  stealthy  warmth  and 
cautious  light  along  their  edges ; every  bush,  every  stone, 
every  tuft  of  moss  has  its  voice  in  the  matter,  and  joins 
with  individual  character  in  the  universal  will.  Who  is 
there  who  can  do  this  as  Turner  will  ? The  old  masters 
would  have  settled  the  matter  at  once  with  a transparent, 
agreeable,  but  monotonous  gray.  Many  among  the  mod- 
erns would  probably  be  equally  monotonous  with  absurd 
and  false  colors.  Turner  only  would  give  the  uncertainty 
— the  palpitating,  perpetual  change — the  subjection  of 
all  to  a great  influence,  without  one  part  or  portion  being 
lost  or  merged  in  it — the  unity  of  action  with  infinity  of 
agent.  And  I wish  to  insist  on  this  the  more  particularly, 
because  it  is  one  of  the  eternal  principles  § is.  Following 
of  nature,  that  she  will  not  have  one  line  unapproachable 
nor  color,  nor  one  portion  nor  atom  of  vanety  of  nature- 
space  without  a change  in  it.  There  is  not  one  of  her 
shadows,  tints,  or  lines  that  is  not  in  a state  of  perpetual 
variation : I do  not  mean  in  time,  but  in  space.  There  is 
not  a leaf  in  the  world  which  has  the  same  color  visible 
over  its  whole  surface ; it  has  a white  high  light  some- 
where ; and  in  proportion  as  it  curves  to  or  from  that 
focus,  the  color  is  brighter  or  grayer.  Pick  up  a common 
flint  from  the  roadside,  and  count,  if  you  can,  its  changes 
and  hues  of  color.  Every  bit  of  bare  ground  under  your 
feet  has  in  it  a thousand  such — the  gray  pebbles,  the 
warm  ochre,  the  green  of  incipient  vegetation,  the  grays 
and  blacks  of  its  reflexes  and  shadows,  might  keep  a 


272 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 


painter  at  work  for  a month,  if  lie  were  obliged  to  follow 
them  touch  for  touch : how  much  more,  when  the  same 
infinity  of  change  is  carried  out  with  vastness  of  object 
and  space.  The  extreme  of  distance  may  appear  at  first 
monotonous ; but  the  least  examination  will  show  it  to  be 
full  of  every  kind  of  change — that  its  outlines  are  per- 
petually melting  and  appearing  again  — sharp  here, 
vague  there — now  lost  altogether,  now  just  hinted  and 
still  confused  among  each  other — and  so  forever  in  a 
state  and  necessity  of  change.  Hence,  wherever  in  a 
painting  we  have  unvaried  color  extended  even  over  a 
small  space,  there  is  falsehood.  Nothing  can  be  natural 
which  is  monotonous ; nothing  true  which  only  tells  one 
story.  The  brown  foreground  and  rocks  of  Claude’s 
Sinon  before  Priam  are  as  false  as  color  can  be : first,  be- 
cause there  never  was  such  a brown  under  sunlight,  for 
even  the  sand  and  cinders  (volcanic  tufa)  about  Naples, 
granting  that  he  had  studied  from  these  ugliest  of  all 
formations,  are,  where  they  are  fresh  fractured,  golden 
and  lustrous  in  full  light  compared  to  these  ideals  of 
crag,  and  become,  like  all  other  rocks,  quiet  and  gray 
when  weathered ; and  secondly,  because  no  rock  that  ever 
nature  stained  is  without  its  countless  breaking  tints 
of  varied  vegetation.  And  even  Stanfield,  master  as  he 
is  of  rock  form,  is  apt  in  the  same  way  to  give  us  here 
and  there  a little  bit  of  mud,  instead  of  stone. 

What  I am  next  about  to  say  with  respect  to  Turner’s 
color,  I should  wish  to  be  received  with  caution,  as  it 
§ it.  His  dislike  admits  of  dispute.  I think  that  the  first 
fondness’  for  The  approach  to  viciousness  of  color  in  any 
?ow°and°b  i°a  c k’  master  is  commonly  indicated  chiefly  by  a 
tm?  re-  prevalence  of  purple,  and  an  absence  of 
8pect  yellow.  I think  nature  mixes  yellow  with 

almost  every  one  of  her  hues,  never,  or  very  rarely,  using 
red  without  it,  but  frequently  using  yellow  with  scarcely 
any  red ; and  I believe  it  will  be  in  consequence  found 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 


273 


that  her  favorite  opposition,  that  which  generally  char- 
acterizes and  gives  tone  to  her  color,  is  yellow  and  black, 
passing,  as  it  retires,  into  white  and  blue.  It  is  beyond 
dispute  that  the  great  fundamental  opposition  of  Rubens 
is  yellow  and  black ; and  that  on  this,  concentrated  in 
one  part  of  the  picture,  and  modified  in  various  grays 
throughout,  chiefly  depend  the  tones  of  all  his  finest 
“works.  And  in  Titian,  though  there  is  a far  greater  ten- 
dency to  the  purple  than  in  Rubens,  I believe  no  red  is 
ever  mixed  with  the  pure  blue,  or  glazed  over  it,  which 
has  not  in  it  a modifying  quantity  of  yellow.  At  all 
events,  I am  nearly  certain  that  whatever  rich  and  pure 
purples  are  introduced  locally,  by  the  great  colorists, 
nothing  is  so  destructive  of  all  fine  color  as  the  slightest 
tendency  to  purple  in  general  tone;  and  I am  equally 
certain  that  Turner  is  distinguished  from  all  the  vicious 
colorists  of  the  present  day,  by  the  foundation  of  all  his 
tones  being  black,  yellow,  and  the  intermediate  grays, 
while  the  tendency  of  our  common  glare-seekers  is  in- 
variably to  pure,  cold,  impossible  purples.  So  fond 
indeed  is  Turner  of  black  and  yellow,  that  he  has  given 
us  more  than  one  composition,  both  drawings  and  paint- 
ings, based  on  these  two  colors  alone,  of  which  the  mag- 
nificent Quilleboeuf,  which  I consider  one  of  the  most 
perfect  pieces  of  simple  color  existing,  is  a most  striking 
example  ; and  I think  that  where,  as  in  some  of  the  late 
Yenices,  there  has  been  something  like  a marked  appear- 
ance of  purple  tones,  even  though  exquisitely  corrected 
by  vivid  orange  and  warm  green  in  the  foreground,  the 
general  color  has  not  been  so  perfect  or  truthful : my 
own  feelings  would  always  guide  me  rather  to  the  warm 
grays  of  such  pictures  as  the  Snow  Storm,  or  the  glow- 
ing scarlet  and  gold  of  the  Napoleon  and  Slave  Ship. 
But  I do  not  insist  at  present  on  this  part  of  the  subject, 
as  being  perhaps  more  proper  for  future  examination, 
when  we  are  considering  the  ideal  of  color. 


274: 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 


The  above  remarks  have  been  made  entirely  with  ref- 
erence to  the  recent  Academy  pictures,  which  have  been 
chiefly  attacked  for  their  color.  I by  no 

§18.  His  early  J , , , ,,  J , 

works  are  false  in  means  intend  them  to  apply  to  the  early 
works  of  Turner,  those  which  the  enlight- 
ened newspaper  critics  are  perpetually  talking  about  as 
characteristic  of  a time  when  Turner  was  “ really  great.” 
He  is,  and  was,  really  great,  from  the  time  when  he  first 
could  hold  a brush,  but  he  never  was  so  great  as  he  is  now. 
The  Crossing  the  Brook,  glorious  as  it  is  as  a compo- 
sition, and  perfect  in  all  that  is  most  desirable  and  most 
ennobling  in  art,  is  scarcely  to  be  looked  upon  as  a piece 
of  color ; it  is  an  agreeable,  cool,  gray  rendering  of  space 
and  form,  but  it  is  not  color ; if  it  be  regarded  as  such,  it 
is  thorougly  false  and  vapid,  and  very  far  inferior  to  the 
tones  of  the  same  kind  given  by  Claude.  The  reddish 
brown  in  the  foreground  of  the  Fall  of  Carthage,  with 
all  diffidence  be  it  spoken,  is,  as  far  as  my  feelings  are 
competent  to  judge,  crude,  sunless,  and  in  every  way 
wrong ; and  both  this  picture  and  the  Building  of  Car- 
thage, though  this  latter  is  far  the  finer  of  the  two,  are 
quite  unworthy  of  Turner  as  a colorist. 

Not  so  with  the  drawings ; these,  countless  as  they  are, 
from  the  earliest  to  the  latest,  though  presenting  an  un« 
§ 19.  His  drawings  broken  chain  of  increasing  difficulty  over- 
invariabiy  perfect.  Come,  and  truth  illustrated,  are  all,  accord- 
ing to  their  aim,  equally  faultless  as  to  color.  Whatever 
we  have  hitherto  said,  applies  to  them  in  its  fullest 
extent ; though  each,  being  generally  the  realization  of 
some  effect  actually  seen,  and  realized  but  once,  re- 
quires almost  a separate  essay.  As  a class,  they  are 
far  quieter  and  chaster  than  the  Academy  pictures, 
and,  were  they  better  known,  might  enable  our  connois- 
seurs to  form  a somewhat  more  accurate  judgment  of 
the  intense  study  of  nature  on  which  all  Turner’s  color 
is  based. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR. 


27a 


One  point  only  remains  to  be  noted  respecting  his 
system  of  color  generally — its  entire  subordination  to 
light  and  shade,  a subordination  which  §20  The  gubiec_ 
there  is  no  need  to  prove  here,  as  every  of* coiorto  thate3 
engraving  from  his  works — and  few  are  chiaroscuro, 
unengraved — is  sufficient  demonstration  of  it.  I have 
before  shown  the  inferiority  and  unimportance  in  nature 
,of  color,  as  a truth,  compared  with  light  and  shade. 
That  inferiority  is  maintained  and  asserted  by  all  really 
great  works  of  color ; but  most  by  Turner’s  as  their  color 
is  most  intense.  Whatever  brilliancy  he  may  choose  to 
assume,  is  subjected  to  an  inviolable  law  of  chiaroscuro, 
from  which  there  is  no  appeal.  No  richness  nor  depth  of 
tint  is  considered  of  value  enough  to  atone  for  the  loss 
of  one  particle  of  arranged  light.  No  brilliancy  of  hue 
is  permitted  to  interfere  with  the  depth  of  a determined 
shadow.  And  hence  it  is,  that  while  engravings  from 
works  far  less  splendid  in  color  are  often  vapid  and  cold, 
because  the  little  color  employed  has  not  been  rightly 
based  on  light  and  shade,  an  engraving  from  Turner  is 
always  beautiful  and  forcible  in  proportion  as  the  color 
of  the  original  has  been  intense,  and  never  in  a single 
instance  has  failed  to  express  the  picture  as  a perfect 
composition.*  Powerful  and  captivating  and  faithful  as 

* This  is  saying  too  much  ; for  it  not  unfrequently  happens  that  the 
light  and  shade  of  the  original  is  lost  in  the  engraving,  the  effect  of 
which  is  afterwards  partially  recovered,  with  the  aid  of  the  artist  him- 
self, by  introductions  of  new  features.  Sometimes,  when  a drawing 
depends  chiefly  on  color,  the  engraver  gets  unavoidably  embarrassed, 
and  must  be  assisted  by  some  change  or  exaggeration  of  the  effect ; 
but  the  more  frequent  case  is,  that  the  engraver’s  difficulties  result 
merely  from  his  inattention  to,  or  wilful  deviations  from  his  original ; 
and  that  the  artist  is  obliged  to  assist  him  by  such  expedients  as  the 
error  itself  suggests. 

Not  unfrequently  in  reviewing  a plate,  as  very  constantly  in  review- 
ing a picture  after  some  time  has  elapsed  since  its  completion,  even 
the  painter  is  liable  to  make  unnecessary  or  hurtful  changes.  In  the 
plate  of  the  Old  Temeraire,  lately  published  in  Finden’s  gallery,  I do 


276 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR . 


his  color  is,  it  is  the  least  important  of  all  his  excellences, 
because  it  is  the  least  important  feature  of  nature.  He 
paints  in  color,  but  he  thinks  in  light  and  shade ; and 

not  know  whether  it  was  Turner  or  the  engraver  who  broke  up  the 
water  into  sparkling  ripple,  but  it  was  a grievous  mistake,  and  has  de- 
stroyed the  whole  dignity  and  value  of  the  conception.  The  flash  of 
lightning  in  the  Winchelsea  of  the  England  series  does  not  exist  in  the 
original ; it  is  put  in  to  withdraw  the  attention  of  the  spectator  from 
the  sky,  which  the  engraver  destroyed. 

There  is  an  unfortunate  persuasion  among  modern  engravers  that 
color  can  be  expressed  by  particular  characters  of  line  ; and  in  the  en- 
deavor to  distinguish  by  different  lines,  different  colors  of  equal  depth, 
they  frequently  lose  the  whole  system  of  light  and  shade.  It  will 
hardly  be  credited  that  the  piece  of  foreground  on  the  left  of  Turner’s 
Modern  Italy,  represented  in  the  Art-Union  engraving  as  nearly  coal 
black,  is  in  the  original  of  a pale  warm  gray,  hardly  darker  than  the 
sky.  All  attempt  to  record  color  in  engraving,  is  heraldry  out  of  its 
place : the  engraver  has  no  power  beyond  that  of  expressing  trans- 
parency or  opacity  by  greater  or  less  openness  of  line,  (for  the  same 
depth  of  tint  is  producible  by  lines  with  very  different  intervals.) 

Texture  of  surface  is  only  in  a measure  in  the  power  of  the  steel,  and 
ought  not  to  be  laboriously  sought  after  ; nature’s  surfaces  are  distin- 
guished more  by  form  than  texture  ; a stone  is  often  smoother  than  a 
leaf  ; but  if  texture  is  to  be  given,  let  the  engraver  at  least  be  sure  that 
he  knows  what  the  texture  of  the  object  actually  is,  and  how  to  rep- 
resent it.  The  leaves  in  the  foreground  of  the  engraved  Mercury  and 
Argus  have  all  of  them  three  or  four  black  lines  across  them.  What 
sort  of  leaf  texture  is  supposed  to  be  represented  by  these  ? The  stones 
in  the  foreground  of  Turner’s  Llanthony  received  from  the  artist  the 
powdery  texture  of  sandstone  ; the  engraver  covered  them  with  con- 
torted lines  and  turned  them  into  old  timber. 

A still  more  fatal  cause  of  failure  is  the  practice  of  making  out  or 
finishing  what  the  artist  left  incomplete.  In  the  England  plate  of 
Dudley,  there  are  two  offensive  blank  windows  in  the  large  building 
with  the  chimney  on  the  left.  These  are  engraver’s  improvements  ; in 
the  original  they  are  barely  traceable,  their  lines  being  excessively 
faint  and  tremulous  as  with  the  movement  of  heated  air  between  them 
and  the  spectator  : their  vulgarity  is  thus  taken  away,  and  the  whole 
building  left  in  one  grand  unbroken  mass.  It  is  almost  impossible  to 
break  engravers  of  this  unfortunate  habit,  I have  even  heard  of  their 
taking  journeys  of  some  distance  in  order  to  obtain  knowledge  of  the 
details  which  the  artist  intentionally  omitted  ; and  the  evil  will  neces- 
sarily continue  until  they  receive  something  like  legitimate  artistical 


OF  TRUTH  OF  COLOR . 


277 


were  it  necessary,  rather  than  lose  one  line  of  his  forms, 
or  one  ray  of  his  sunshine,  would,  I apprehend,  be  con- 
tent to  paint  in  black  and  white  to  the  end  of  his  life.  It 
is  by  mistaking  the  shadow  for  the  substance,  and  aim- 
ing at  the  brilliancy  and  the  fire,  without  perceiving  of 
what  deep  studied  shade  and  inimitable  form  it  is  at 
once  the  result  and  the  illustration,  that  the  host  of  his 
imitators  sink  into  deserved  disgrace.  With  him,  as 
with  all  the  greatest  painters,  and  in  Turner’s  more  than 
all,  the  hue  is  a beautiful  auxiliary  in  working  out  the 
great  impression  to  be  conveyed,  but  is  not  the  source 
nor  the  essence  of  that  impression;  it  is  little  more 
than  a visible  melody,  given  to  raise  and  assist  the  mind- 
in  the  reception  of  nobler  ideas — as  sacred  passages  of 
sweet  sound,  to  prepare  the  feelings  for  the  reading  of 
the  mysteries  of  God. 

education.  In  one  or  two  instances,  however,  especially  in  small 
plates,  they  have  shown  great  feeling  ; the  plates  of  Miller  (especially 
those  of  the  Turner  illustrations  to  Scott)  are  in  most  instances 
perfect  and  beautiful  interpretations  of  the  originals  ; so  those  of  Good- 
all  in  Rogers’s  works,  and  Cousens’s  in  the  Rivers  of  France;  those  of  the 
Yorkshire  series  are  also  very  valuable,  though  singularly  inferior  to 
the  drawings.  But  none  even  of  these  men  appear  capable  of  produc- 
ing a large  plate.  They  have  no  knowledge  of  the  means  of  rendering 
their  lines  vital  or  valuable  ; cross-hatching  stands  for  everything  ; and 
inexcusably,  for  though  we  cannot  expect  every  engraver  to  etch 
like  Rembrandt  or  Albert  Durer,  or  every  wood-cutter  to  draw  like 
Titian,  at  least  something  of  the  system  and  power  of  the  grand 
works  of  those  men  might  be  preserved,  and  some  mind  and  meaning 
stolen  into  the  reticulation  of  the  restless  modern  lines. 


CHAPTEE  m. 


OF  TKUTH  OF  CHIAEOSCURO. 

It  is  not  my  intention  to  enter,  in  the  present  portion 
of  the  work,  upon  any  examination  of  Turner’s  particular 
§ i.  we  are  not  at  effects  of  light.  We  must  know  something 

Fn?pardcuia?aS-  a^ou^  what  is  beautiful  before  we  speak  of 
fects  of  light.  these. 

At  present  I wish  only  to  insist  upon  two  great  prin- 
ciples of  chiaroscuro,  which  are  observed  throughout 
the  works  of  the  great  modern  master,  and  set  at  defiance 
by  the  ancients — great  general  laws,  which  may,  or  may 
not,  be  sources  of  beauty,  but  whose  observance  is  indis- 
putably necessary  to  truth. 

Go  out  some  bright  sunny  day  in  winter,  and  look  for 
a tree  with  a broad  trunk,  having  rather  delicate  boughs 
hanging  down  on  the  sunny  side,  near  the  trunk.  Stand 
four  or  five  yards  from  it,  with  your  back  to  the  sun. 
You  will  find  that  the  boughs  between  you  and  the  trunk 
of  the  tree  are  very  indistinct,  that  you  confound  them  in 
places  with  the  trunk  itself,  and  cannot  possibly  trace 
one  of  them  from  its  insertion  to  its  extremity.  But  the 
shadows  which  they  cast  upon  the  trunk,  you  will  find 
clear,  dark,  and  distinct,  perfectly  traceable  through  their 
whole  course,  except  when  they  are  interrupted  by  the 
crossing  boughs.  And  if  you  retire  backwards,  you  will 
come  to  a point  where  you  cannot  see  the  intervening 
boughs  at  all,  or  only  a fragment  of  them  here  and  there, 
but  can  still  see  their  shadows  perfectly  plain.  Now, 
this  may  serve  to  show  you  the  immense  prominence  and 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CHIAROSCURO. 


279 


importance  of  shadows  where  there  is  anything  like 
bright  light.  They  are,  in  fact,  commonly  far  more  con- 
spicuous than  the  thing  which  casts  them,  for  being  as 
as  large  as  the  casting  object,  and  altogether  made  up 
of  a blackness  deeper  than  the  darkest  part  of  the 
casting  object,  (while  that  object  is  also  broken  up 
with  positive  and  reflected  lights,)  their  large,  broad, 
unbroken  spaces,  tell  strongly  on  the  eye,  especially 
as  all  form  is  rendered  partially,  often  totally  invis- 
ible within  them,  and  as  they  are  suddenly  termi- 
nated by  the  sharpest  lines  which  nature  ever  shows. 
For  no  outline  of  objects  whatsoever  is  so  sharp  as  the 
edge  of  a close  shadow.  Put  your  finger  over  a piece  of 
white  paper  in  the  sun,  and  observe  the  difference  be- 
tween the  softness  of  the  outline  of  the  finger  itself  and 
the  decision  of  the  edge  of  the  shadow.  And  note  also 
the  excessive  gloom  of  the  latter.  A piece  of  black  cloth, 
laid  in  the  light,  will  not  attain  one-fourth  of  the  black- 
ness of  the  paper  under  the  shadow. 

Hence  shadows  are  in  reality,  when  the  sun  is  shining, 
the  most  conspicuous  thing  in  a landscape,  next  to  the 
highest  lights.  All  forms  are  understood  §2  And  therefore 
and  explained  chiefly  by  their  agency : the  ehadow^i's68  the 
roughness  of  the  bark  of  a tree,  for  in-  chief  means  of  ex- 
stance,  is  not  seen  in  the  light,  nor  in  the  of  HgM. 
shade ; it  is  only  seen  between  the  two,  where  the  shad- 
ows of  the  ridges  explain  it.  And  hence,  if  we  have  to 
express  vivid  light,  our  very  first  aim  must  be  to  get 
the  shadows  sharp  and  visible;  and  this  is  not  to  be 
done  by  blackness,  (though  indeed  chalk  on  white  paper 
is  the  only  thing  which  comes  up  to  the  intensity  of  real 
shadows,)  but  by  keeping  them  perfectly  flat,  keen,  and 
even.  A very  pale  shadow,  if  it  be  quite  flat — if  it  con- 
ceal the  details  of  the  objects  it  crosses — if  it  be  gray 
and  cold  compared  to  their  color,  and  very  sharp  edged, 
will  be  far  more  conspicuous,  and  make  everything  out 


280 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CHIAROSCURO. 


of  it  look  a great  deal  more  like  sunlight,  than  a shadow 
ten  times  its  depth,  shaded  off  at  the  edge,  and  con- 
3 t 1 1 absence  ^oun(^e(^  with  the  color  of  the  objects  on 
of  * such  distinct-  which  it  falls.  Now  the  old  masters  of  the 

ness  in  the  works  in,-..  . 

of  the  Italian  Italian  school,  m almost  all  their  works, 
directly  reverse  this  principle : they  black- 
en their  shadows  till  the  picture  becomes  quite  appalling, 
and  everything  in  it  invisible  ; but  they  make  a point  of 
losing  their  edges,  and  carrying  them  off  by  gradation ; 
in  consequence  utterly  destroying  every  appearance  of 
sunlight.  All  their  shadows  are  the  faint,  secondary  dark- 
nesses of  mere  daylight ; the  sun  has  nothing  whatever 
to  do  with  them.  The  shadow  between  the  pages  of  the 
book  which  you  hold  in  your  hand  is  distinct  and  visible 
enough,  (though  you  are,  I suppose,  reading  it  by  the 
ordinary  daylight  of  your  room,)  out  of  the  sun ; and  this 
weak  and  secondary  shadow  is  all  that  we  ever  find  in 
the  Italian  masters,  as  indicative  of  sunshine.  Even 
. , Cuvp  and  Berghem,  though  they  know 

§ 4.  And  partial  , J F , , n i . .i  i j.  • 

absence  in  the  thoroughly  well  what  they  are  about  m 
their  foregrounds,  forget  the  principle  in 
their  distances ; and  though  in  Claude’s  seaports,  where 
he  has  plain  architecture  to  deal  with,  he  gives  us  some- 
thing like  real  shadows  along  the  stones,  the  moment  we 
come  to  ground  and  foliage  with  lateral  light,  away  go 
the  shadows  and  the  sun  together.  In  the  Marriage  of 
Isaac  and  Rebecca,  in  our  own  gallery,  the  trunks  of  the 
trees  between  the  water-wheel  and  the  white  figure  in  the 
middle  distance  are  dark  and  visible ; but  their  shadows 
are  scarcely  discernible  on  the  ground,  and  are  quite 
vague  and  lost  in  the  building.  In  nature,  every  bit  of 
the  shadow  would  have  been  darker  than  the  darkest 
part  of  the  trunks,  and  both  on  the  ground  and  building 
would  have  been  defined  and  conspicuous;  while  the 
trunks  themselves  would  have  been  faint,  confused,  and 
indistinguishable,  in  their  illumined  parts,  from  the  grass 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CHIAROSCURO . 


281 


or  distance.  So  in  Poussin’s  Phocion,  the  shadow  of  the 
stick  on  the  stone  in  the  right-hand  corner,  is  shaded  off 
and  lost,  while  you  see  the  stick  plain  all  the  way.  In 
nature’s  sunlight  it  would  have  been  the  direct  reverse 
— you  would  have  seen  the  shadow  black  and  sharp  all 
the  way  down,  but  you  would  have  had  to  look  for  the 
stick,  which  in  all  probability  would  in  several  places 
have  been  confused  with  the  stone  behind  it. 

And  so  throughout  the  works  of  Claude,  Poussin,  and 
Salvator,  we  shall  find,  especially  in  their  conventional 
foliage,  and  unarticulated  barbarisms  of  rock,  that  their 
whole  sum  and  substance  of  chiaroscuro  is  merely  the 
gradation  and  variation  which  nature  gives  in  the  body 
of  her  shadows,  and  that  all  which  they  do  to  express 
sunshine,  she  does  to  vary  shade.  They  take  only  one 
step,  while  she  always  takes  two ; marking,  in  the  first 
place,  with  violent  decision,  the  great  transition  from  sun 
to  shade,  and  then  varying  the  shade  itself  with  a thou- 
sand gentle  gradations  and  double  shadows,  in  them- 
selves equivalent,  and  more  than  equivalent,  to  all  that 
the  old  masters  did  for  their  entire  chiaroscuro. 

Now  if  there  be  one  principle,  or  secret  more  than 
another,  on  which  Turner  depends  for  attaining  brill- 
iancy of  light,  it  is  his  clear  and  exquisite  m , . 
drawing  ot  the  shadows.  Whatever  is  ob-  of  Turner’s  works 

. , -i  n -i  • 7 • -i  • i in  this  respect. 

scare,  misty,  or  undefined  m his  objects  or 
his  atmosphere,  he  takes  care  that  the  shadows  be  sharp 
and  clear — and  then  he  knows  that  the  light  will  take 
care  of  itself,  and  he  makes  them  clear,  not  by  blackness, 
but  by  excessive  evenness,  unity,  and  sharpness  of  edge. 
He  will  keep  them  clear  and  distinct,  and  make  them  felt 
as  shadows,  though  they  are  so  faint,  that,  but  for  their 
decisive  forms,  we  should  not  have  observed  them  for 
darkness  at  all.  He  will  throw  them  one  after  another 
like  transparent  veils,  along  the  earth  and  upon  the  air, 
till  the  whole  picture  palpitates  with  them,  and  yet  the 


282 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CHIAROSCURO . 


darkest  of  them  will  be  a faint  gray,  imbued  and  penetra- 
ted with  light.  The  pavement  on  the  left  of  the  Hero  and 
Leander,  is  about  the  most  thorough  piece  of  this  kind  of 
sorcery  that  I remember  in  art ; but  of  the  general  princi- 
ple, not  one  of  his  works  is  without  constant  evidence. 
Take  the  vignette  of  the  garden  opposite  the  title-page  of 
Rogers’s  Poems,  and  note  the  drawing  of  the  nearest  bal- 
ustrade on  the  right.  The  balusters  themselves  are  faint 
and  misty,  and  the  light  through  them  feeble ; but  the 
shadows  of  them  are  sharp  and  dark,  and  the  intervening 
light  as  intense  as  it  can  be  left.  And  see  how  much 
more  distinct  the  shadow  of  the  running  figure  is  on  the 
pavement,  than  the  checkers  of  the  pavement  itself. 
Observe  the  shadows  on  the  trunk  of  the  tree  at  page  91, 
how  they  conquer  all  the  details  of  the  trunk  itself, 
and  become  darker  and  more  conspicuous  than  any 
part  of  the  boughs  or  limbs,  and  so  in  the  vignette  to 
Campbell’s  Beechtree’s  Petition.  Take  the  beautiful 
concentration  of  all  that  is  most  characteristic  of  Italy 
as  she  is,  at  page  168  of  Rogers’s  Italy,  where  we  have 
the  long  shadows  of  the  trunks  made  by  far  the  most 
conspicuous  thing  in  the  whole  foreground,  and  hear 
how  Wordsworth,  the  keenest-eyed  of  all  modern  poets 
for  what  is  deep  and  essential  in  nature,  illustrates 
Turner  here,  as  we  shall  find  him  doing  in  all  other 
points. 

“At  the  root 

Of  that  tall  pine,  the  shadow  of  whose  bare 
And  slender  stem,  while  here  I sit  at  eve, 

Oft  stretches  tow’rds  me,  like  a long  straight  path, 

Traced  faintly  in  the  greensward.” 

Excursion,  Book  VI. 

So  again  in  the  Rhymer’s  Glen,  (Illustrations  to  Scott,) 
note  the  intertwining  of  the  shadows  across  the  path, 
and  the  checkering  of  the  trunks  by  them ; and  again  on 
the  bridge  in  the  Armstrong’s  Tower ; and  yet  more  in 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CHIAROSCURO . 


283 


the  long  avenue  of  Brienne,  where  we  have  a length  of 
two  or  three  miles  expressed  by  the  playing  shadows 
alone,  and  the  whole  picture  filled  with  sunshine  by  the 
long  lines  of  darkness  cast  by  the  figures  on  the  snow. 
The  Hampton  Court  in  the  England  series,  is  another 
very  striking  instance.  In  fact,  the  general  system  of 
execution  observable  in  all  Turner’s  drawings,  is  to  work 
his  grounds  richly  and  fully,  sometimes  stippling,  and 
giving  infinity  of  delicate,  mysterious,  and  ceaseless  de- 
tail ; and  on  the  ground  so  prepared  to  cast  his  shadows 
with  one  dash  of  the  brush,  leaving  an  excessively  sharp 
edge  of  watery  color.  Such  at  least  is  commonly  the 
case  in  such  coarse  and  broad  instances  as  those  I have 
above  given.  Words  are  not  accurate  ^ t r 

& § 6.  The  effect  of 

enough,  nor  delicate  enough  to  express  or  Ms  shadows  upon 
trace  the  constant,  all-pervading  influence 
of  the  finer  and  vaguer  shadows  throughout  his  works, 
that  thrilling  influence  which  gives  to  the  light  they 
leave,  its  passion  and  its  power.  There  is  not  a stone, 
not  a leaf,  not  a cloud,  over  which  light  is  not  felt  to  be 
actually  passing  and  palpitating  before  our  eyes.  There 
is  the  motion,  the  actual  wave  and  radiation  of  the  darted 
beam — not  the  dull  universal  daylight,  which  falls  on 
the  landscape  without  life,  or  direction,  or  speculation, 
equal  on  all  things  and  dead  on  all  things;  but  the 
breathing,  animated,  exulting  light,  which  feels,  and  re- 
ceives, and  rejoices,  and  acts — which  chooses  one  thing 
and  rejects  another — which  seeks,  and  finds,  and  loses 
again — leaping  from  rock  to  rock,  from  leaf  to  leaf,  from 
wave  to  wave, — glowing,  or  flashing,  or  scintillating,  ac- 
cording to  what  it  strikes,  or  in  its  holier  moods,  absorb- 
ing and  enfolding  all  things  in  the  deep  fulness  of  its 
repose,  and  then  again  losing  itself  in  bewilderment,  and 
doubt,  and  dimness;  or  perishing  and  passing  away, 
entangled  in  drifting  mist,  or  melted  into  melancholy 
air,  but  still, — kindling,  or  declining,  sparkling  or  still, 


284 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CHIAROSCURO. 


it  is  the  living  light,  which  breathes  in  its  deepest,  most 
entranced  rest,  which  sleeps,  but  never  dies. 

I need  scarcely  insist  farther  on  the  marked  distinc- 
tion between  the  works  of  the  old  masters  and  those  of 
§7.  The  distmc-  the  great  modern  landscape-painters  in 
beuveen  almost  an  this  respect.  It  is  one  which  the  reader 
aneciSrand°Lod-  can  perfectly  well  work  out  for  himself,  by 
era  schools.  the  slightest  systematic  attention, — one 

which  he  will  find  existing,  not  merely  between  this 
work  and  that,  but  throughout  the  whole  body  of  their 
productions,  and  down  to  every  leaf  and  line.  And  a 
little  careful  watching  of  nature,  especially  in  her  foliage 
and  foregrounds,  and  comparison  of  her  with  Claude, 
Gaspar  Poussin,  and  Salvator,  will  soon  show  him  that 
those  artists  worked  entirely  on  conventional  principles, 
not  representing  what  they  saw,  but  what  they  thought 
would  make  a handsome  picture;  and  even  when  they 
went  to  nature,  which  I believe  to  have  been  a very  much 
rarer  practice  with  them  than  their  biographers  would 
have  us  suppose,  they  copied  her  like  children,  drawing 
what  they  knew  to  be  there,  but  not  what  they  saw 
there.*  I believe  you  may  search  the  foregrounds  of 
Claude,  from  one  end  of  Europe  to  another,  and  you  will 
not  find  the  shadow  of  one  leaf  cast  upon  another.  You 
will  find  leaf  after  leaf  painted  more  or  less  boldly  or 
brightly  out  of  the  black  ground,  and  you  will  find  dark 
leaves  defined  in  perfect  form  upon  the  light ; but  you 
will  not  find  the  form,  of  a single  leaf  disguised  or  in- 
terrupted by  the  shadow  of  another.  And  Poussin  and 
Salvator  are  still  farther  from  anything  like  genuine 
truth.  There  is  nothing  in  their  pictures  which  might 
not  be  manufactured  in  their  painting-room,  with  a 
branch  or  two  of  brambles  and  a bunch  or  two  of  weeds 
before  them,  to  give  them  the  form  of  the  leaves.  And 
it  is  refreshing  to  turn  from  their  ignorant  and  impotent 
* Compare  Sect.  II.  Chap.  II.  § 6. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CHIAROSCURO. 


285 


repetitions  of  childish  conception,  to  the  clear,  close, 
genuine  studies  of  modern  artists ; for  it  is  not  Turner 
only,  (though  here,  as  in  all  other  points,  the  first),  who 
is  remarkable  for  fine  and  expressive  decision  of  chiaro- 
scuro. Some  passages  by  J.  X).  Harding  are  thoroughly 
admirable  in  this  respect,  though  this  master  is  getting 
a little  too  much  into  a habit  of  general  keen  execution, 
which  prevents  the  parts  which  ought  to  be  especially 
decisive  from  being  felt  as  such  and  which  makes  his 
pictures,  especially  the  large  ones,  look  a little  thin. 
But  some  of  his  later  passages  of  rock  foreground  have, 
taken  in  the  abstract,  been  beyond  all  praise,  owing  to 
the  exquisite  forms  and  firm  expressiveness  of  their 
shadows.  And  the  chiaroscuro  of  Stanfield  is  equally 
deserving  of  the  most  attentive  study. 

The  second  point  to  which  I wish  at  present  to  direct 
attention  has  reference  to  the  arrangement  of  light  and 
shade.  It  is  the  constant  habit  of  nature  § 8 second  great 
to  use  both  her  highest  lights  and  deepest  f™ccfre0of 
shadows  in  exceedingly  small  quantity;  ai|hBha&  “e 
always  in  points,  never  in  masses.  She  will  ^tit/and’on'iy 
give  a large  mass  of  tender  light  in  sky  or  m points- 
water,  impressive  by  its  quantity,  and  a large  mass  of 
tender  shadow  relieved  against  it,  in  foliage,  or  hill,  or 
building ; but  the  light  is  always  subdued  if  it  be  exten- 
sive— the  shadow  always  feeble  if  it  be  broad.  She  will 
then  fill  up  all  the  rest  of  her  picture  with  middle  tints 
and  pale  grays  of  some  sort  or  another,  and  on  this  quiet 
and  harmonious  wThole,  she  will  touch  her  high  lights  in 
spots — the  foam  of  an  isolated  wave — the  sail  of  a soli- 
tary vessel — the  flash  of  the  sun  from  a wet  roof — the 
gleam  of  a single  whitewashed  cottage — or  some  such 
sources  of  local  brilliancy,  she  will  use  so  vividly  and 
delicately  as  to  throw  everything  else  into  definite  shade 
by  comparison.  And  then  taking  up  the  gloom,  she  will 
use  the  black  hollows  of  some  overhanging  bank,  or  the 


286 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CHIAROSCURO. 


black  dress  of  some  shaded  figure,  or  the  depth  of  some 
sunless  chink  of  wall  or  window,  so  sharply  as  to  throw 
everything  else  into  definite  light  by  comparison ; thus 
reducing  the  whole  mass  of  her  picture  to  a delicate 
middle  tint,  approaching,  of  course,  here  to  light,  and 
there  to  gloom;  but  yet  sharply  separated  from  the 
utmost  degrees  either  of  the  one  or  the  other. 

Now  it  is  a curious  thing  that  none  of  our  writers  on 
art  seem  to  have  noticed  the  great  principle  of  nature 
§ 9.  Neglect  or  *n  this  respect.  They  all  talk  of  deep 
twfrprincipie  by  shadow  as  a thing  that  may  be  given  in 
writers  on  art.  quantity, — one  fourth  of  the  picture,  or,  in 

certain  effects,  much  more.  Barry,  for  instance,  says 
that  the  practice  of  the  great  painters,  who  “ best  under- 
stood the  effects  of  chiaroscuro,”  was,  for  the  most  part, 
to  make  the  mass  of  middle  tint  larger  than  the  light, 
and  the  mass  of  dark  larger  than  the  masses  of  light  and 
middle  tint  together,  i.e .,  occupying  more  than  one-half 
of  the  picture.  Now  I do  not  know  what  we  are  to  sup- 
pose is  meant  by  “understanding  chiaroscuro.”  If  it 
means  being  able  to  manufacture  agreeable  patterns  in 
the  shape  of  pyramids,  and  crosses,  and  zigzags,  into 
which  arms  and  legs  are  to  be  persuaded,  and  passion 
and  motion  arranged,  for  the  promotion  and  encourage- 
ment of  the  cant  of  criticism,  such  a principle  may  be 
productive  of  the  most  advantageous  results.  But  if 
it  means,  being  acquainted  with  the  deep,  perpetual, 
systematic,  unintrusive  simplicity  and  unwearied  variety 
of  nature’s  chiaroscuro — if  it  means  the  perception  that 
blackness  and  sublimity  are  not  synonymous,  and  that 
space  and  light  may  possibly  be  coadjutors — then  no 
A , man,  who  ever  advocated  or  dreamed  of 

§ 10.  And  conse-  . . . 

qnent  misguiding  such  a principle,  is  anything  more  than  a 
of  the  student.  . , , , . _ ” . . . 

novice,  blunderer,  and  trickster  m chiaro- 
scuro. And  my  firm  belief  is,  that  though  color  is  in- 
great Circe  of 


veighed  against  by  all  artists,  as  the 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CHIAROSCURO. 


287 


art — the  great  transformer  of  mind  into  sensuality — no 
fondness  for  it,  no  study  of  it,  is  half  so  great  a peril 
and  stumbling-block  to  the  young  student,  as  the  ad- 
miration he  hears  bestowed  on  such  artificial,  false,  and 
juggling  chiaroscuro,  and  the  instruction  he  receives, 
based  on  such  principles  as  that  given  us  by  Fuseli — 
that  “ mere  natural  light  and  shade,  however  separately 
or  individually  true,  is  not  always  legitimate  chiaroscuro 
in  art.”  It  may  not  always  be  agreeable  to  a sophisti- 
cated, unfeeling,  and  perverted  mind;  but  the  student 
had  better  throw  up  his  art  at  once,  than  proceed  on  the 
conviction  that  any  other  can  ever  be  legitimate.  I be- 
lieve I shall  be  perfectly  well  able  to  prove,  in  following 
parts  of  the  work,  that  “ mere  natural  light  and  shade  ” 
is  the  only  fit  and  faithful  attendant  of  the  highest  art ; 
and  that  all  tricks — all  visible,  intended  arrangement — 
all  extended  shadows  and  narrow  lights — everything  in 
fact,  in  the  least  degree  artificial,  or  tending  to  make  the 
mind  dwell  upon  light  and  shade  as  such,  is  an  injury, 
instead  of  an  aid,  to  conceptions  of  high  ideal  dignity. 
I believe  I shall  be  able  also  to  show,  that  nature  man- 
ages her  chiaroscuro  a great  deal  more  neatly  and 
cleverly  than  people  fancy; — that  “mere  natural  light 
and  shade  ” is  a very  much  finer  thing  than  most  artists 
can  put  together,  and  that  none  think  they  can  improve 
upon  it  but  those  who  never  understood  it. 

But  however  this  may  be,  it  is  beyond  dispute  that 
every  permission  given  to  the  student  to  amuse  himself 
with  painting  one  figure  all  black,  and  the  Th 
next  all  white,  and  throwing  them  out  value  of  a simple 

. . 1 ■«  -l  -a  n . . . chiaroscuro. 

with  a background  oi  nothing — every  per- 
mission given  to  him  to  spoil  his  pocketbook  with  sixths 
of  sunshine  and  sevenths  of  shade,  and  other  such  frac- 
tional sublimities,  is  so  much  more  difficulty  laid  in  the 
way  of  his  ever  becoming  a master  ; and  that  none  are  in 
the  right  road  to  real  excellence,  but  those  who  are 


288 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CHIAROSCURO. 


struggling  to  render  the  simplicity,  purity,  and  inex- 
haustible variety  of  nature’s  own  chiaroscuro  in  open, 
cloudless  daylight,  giving  the  expanse  of  harmonious 
light — the  speaking,  decisive  shadow — and  the  exquisite 
grace,  tenderness,  and  grandeur  of  aerial  opposition  of 
local  color  and  equally  illuminated  lines.  No  chiaro- 
scuro is  so  difficult  as  this ; and  none  so  noble,  chaste, 
or  impressive.  On  this  part  of  the  subject,  however,  I 
must  not  enlarge  at  present.  I wish  now  only  to  speak 
of  those  great  principles  of  chiaroscuro,  which  nature 
observes,  even  when  she  is  most  working  for  effect — 
when  she  is  playing  with  thunderclouds  and  sunbeams, 
and  throwing  one  thing  out  and  obscuring  another,  with 
the  most  marked  artistical  feeling  and  intention ; — even 
then,  she  never  forgets  her  great  rule,  to  give  precisely 
the  same  quantity  of  deepest  shade  which  she  does  of 
highest  light,  and  no  more  ; points  of  the  one  answering 
to  points  of  the  other,  and  both  vividly  conspicuous  and 
'separated  from  all  the  rest  of  the  landscape. 

And  it  is  most  singular  that  this  separation,  which  is 
the  great  source  of  brilliancy  in  nature,  should  not  only 
§ 12.  The  sharp  be  unobserved,  but  absolutely  forbidden 
S&asraSs°ffrom  by  our  g‘reai  writers  on  art,  who  are  al- 
her  middle  tint.  ways  talking  about  connecting  the  light 
with  the  shade  by  imperceptible  gradations.  Now  so 
surely  as  this  is  done,  ail  sunshine  is  lost,  for  impercep- 
tible gradation  from  light  to  dark  is  the  characteristic  of 
objects  seen  out  of  sunshine,  in  what  is,  in  landscape, 
shadow.  Nature’s  principle  of  getting  light  is  the  di- 
rect reverse.  She  will  cover  her  whole  landscape  with 
middle  tint,  in  which  she  will  have  as  many  gradations 
as  you  please,  and  a great  many  more  than  you  can 
paint ; but  on  this  middle  tint  she  touches  her  extreme 
lights,  and  extreme  darks,  isolated  and  sharp,  so  that  the 
eye  goes  to  them  directly,  and  feels  them  to  be  keyTnotes 
of  the  whole  composition.  And  although  the  dark 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CHIAROSCURO . 


289 


touches  are  less  attractive  than  the  light  ones,  it  is  not 
because  they  are  less  distinct,  but  because  they  exhibit 
nothing ; while  the  bright  touches  are  in  parts  where 
everything  is  seen,  and  where  in  consequence  the  eye 
goes  to  rest.  But  yet  the  high  lights  do  not  exhibit  any- 
thing in  themselves,  they  are  too  bright  and  dazzle  the 
eye;  and  having  no  shadows  in  them,  cannot  exhibit 
form,  for  form  can  only  be  seen  by  shadow  of  some  kind 
or  another.  Hence  the  highest  lights  and  deepest  darks 
agree  in  this,  that  nothing  is  seen  in  either  of  them ; 
that  both  are  in  exceedingly  small  quantity,  and  both  are 
marked  and  distinct  from  the  middle  tones  of  the  land- 
scape— the  one  by  their  brilliancy,  the  other  by  their 
sharp  edges,  even  though  many  of  the  more  energetic 
middle  tints  may  approach  their  intensity  very  closely. 

I need  scarcely  do  more  than  tell  you  to  glance  at  any 
one  of  the  works  of  Turner,  and  you  will  perceive  in  a 
moment  the  exquisite  observation  of  all  * ,0  m 4 . 

these  principles ; the  sharpness,  decision,  Turner, 
conspicuousness,  and  excessively  small  quantity,  both  of 
extreme  light  and  extreme  shade,  all  the  mass  of  the 
picture  being  graduated  and  delicate  middle  tint.  Take 
up  the  Rivers  of  France,  for  instance,  and  turn  over  a 
few  of  the  plates  in  succession. 

1.  Chateau  Gaillard  (vignette.) — Black  figures  and 
boats,  points  of  shade ; sun-touches  on  ^astle,  and  wake 
of  boat,  of  light.  See  how  the  eye  rests  on  both,  and 
observe  how  sharp  and  separate  all  the  lights  are,  falling 
in  spots,  edged  by  shadow,  but  not  melting  off  into  it. 

2.  Orleans. — The  crowded  figures  supply  both  points 
of  shade  and  light.  Observe  the  delicate  middle  tint 
of  both  in  the  whole  mass  of  buildings,  and  compare 
this  with  the  blackness  of  Canaletto’s  shadows,  against 
which  neither  figures  nor  anything  else  can  ever  tell,  as 
points  of  shade. 

3.  Blois. — White  figures  in  boats,  buttresses  of  bridge, 

19 


290 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CHIAROSCURO. 


dome  of  church  on  the  right,  for  light;  woman  on 
horseback,  heads  of  boats,  for  shadow.  Note  especially 
the  isolation  of  the  light  on  the  church  dome. 

4.  Chateau  de  Blois. — Torches  and  white  figures  for 
light,  roof  of  chapel  and  monks’  dresses  for  shade. 

5.  Beaugency. — Sails  and  spire  opposed  to  buoy  and 
boats.  An  exquisite  instance  of  brilliant,  sparkling, 
’solated  touches  of  morning  light. 

6.  Amboise. — White  sail  and  clouds ; cypresses  under 
castle. 

7.  Chauteau  of  Amboise. — The  boat  in  the  centre,  with 
its  reflections,  needs  no  comment.  Note  the  glancing 
lights  under  the  bridge.  This  is  a very  glorious  and 
perfect  instance. 

8.  St.  Julien,  Tours. — Especially  remarkable  for  its 
preservation  of  deep  points  of  gloom,  because  the  whole 
picture  is  one  of  extended  shade. 

I need  scarcely  go  on.  The  above  instances  are  taken  as 
they  happen  to  come,  without  selection.  The  reader  can 
proceed  for  himself.  I may,  however,  name  a few  cases  of 
chiaroscuro  more  especially  deserving  of  his  study.  Scene 
between  Quilleboeuf  and  Villequier, — Honfleur, — Light 
Towers  of  the  Heve, — On  the  Seine  between  Mantes 
and  Vernon, — The  Lantern  at  St.  Cloud, — Confluence  of 
Seine  and  Marne, — Troyes, — the  first  and  last  vignette, 
and  those  at  pages  36,  63,  95,  184,  192,  203,  of  Rogers’s 
poems ; the  first  and  second  in  Campbell,  St.  Maurice  in 
the  Italy,  where  note  the  black  stork ; Brienne,  Skiddaw, 
May  burgh,  Melrose,  Jedburgh,  in  the  illustrations  to 
Scott,  and  the  vignettes  to  Milton,  not  because  these  are 
one  whit  superior  to  others  of  his  works,  but  because  the 
laws  of  which  we  have  been  speaking  are  more  strikingly 
developed  in  them,  and  because  they  have  been  well  en- 
graved. It  is  impossible  to  reason  from  the  larger  plates, 
in  which  half  the  chiaroscuro  is  totally  destroyed  by  the 
haggling,  blackening,  and  “ making  out  ” of  the  engravers. 


CHAPTEE  IV. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE FIRST,  AS  DEPENDENT  ON  THE  FOCUS 
OF  THE  EYE.* 

In  the  first  chapter  of  this  section  I noticed  the  distinc- 
tion between  real  aerial  perspective,  and  that  overcharged 
contrast  of  light  and  shade  by  which  the  old  masters  ob- 
tained their  deceptive  effect ; and  I showed 
that,  though  inferior  to  them  in  the  precise  ciearfy  a?ndiSted 
quality  or  tone  of  aerial  color,  our  great  objects  drKn 8 by 
modern  master  is  altogether  more  truthful  theirhue- 
in  the  expression  of  the  proportionate  relation  of  all  his 
distances  to  one  another.  I am  now  about  to  examine 
those  modes  of  expressing  space,  both  in  nature  and  art 
by  far  the  most  important,  which  are  dependent,  not  on 
the  relative  hues  of  objects,  but  on  the  drawing  of  them : 
by  far  the  most  important,  I say,  because  the  most  con- 
stant and  certain  ; for  nature  herself  is  not  always  aerial. 
Local  effects  are  frequent  which  interrupt  and  violate 
the  laws  of  aerial  tone,  and  induce  strange  deception  in 
our  ideas  of  distance.  I have  often  seen  the  summit  of  a 
snowy  mountain  look  nearer  than  its  base,  owing  to  the 

* I have  left  this  chapter  in  its  original  place,  because  I am  more 
than  ever  convinced  of  the  truth  of  the  position  advanced  in  the  8th 
paragraph  ; nor  can  I at  present  assign  any  other  cause,  than  that  here 
given,  for  what  is  there  asserted  ; and  yet  I cannot  but  think  that  I 
have  allowed  far  too  much  influence  to  a change  so  slight  as  that  which 
we  insensibly  make  in  the  focus  of  the  eye  ; and  that  the  real  justifica- 
tion of  Turner’s  practice,  with  respect  to  some  of  his  foregrounds,  is 
to  be  elsewhere  sought.  I leave  the  subject,  therefore,  to  the  reader’s 
consideration. 


292 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


perfect  clearness  of  the  upper  air.  But  the  drawing  of 
objects,  that  is  to  say,  the  degree  in  which  their  details 
and  parts  are  distinct  or  confused,  is  an  unfailing  and 
certain  criterion  of  their  distance  ; and  if  this  be  rightly 
rendered  in  a painting,  we  shall  have  genuine  truth  of 
space,  in  spite  of  many  errors  in  aerial  tone ; while,  if 
this  be  neglected,  all  space  will  be  destroyed,  whatever 
dexterity  of  tint  may  be  employed  to  conceal  the  defec- 
tive drawing. 

First,  then,  it  is  to  be  noticed,  that  the  eye,  like  any 
other  lens,  must  have  its  focus  altered,  in  order  to  convey 
a distinct  image  of  objects  at  different  dis- 
bie  to  see  objects  tances ; so  that  it  is  totally  impossible  to 
tances  distinctly  at  see  distinctly,  at  the  same  moment,  two 
one  moment.  objects,  one  of  which  is  much  farther  off 

than  another.  Of  this  anyone  may  convince  himself  in 
an  instant.  Look  at  the  bars  of  your  window-frame,  so  as 
to  get  a clear  image  of  their  lines  and  form,  and  you  can- 
not, while  your  eye  is  fixed  on  them,  perceive  anything 
but  the  most  indistinct  and  shadowy  images  of  whatever 
objects  may  be  visible  beyond.  But  fix  your  eyes  on 
those  objects,  so  as  to  see  them  clearly,  and  though  they 
are  just  beyond  and  apparently  beside  the  window-frame, 
that  frame  will  only  be  felt  or  seen  as  a vague,  flitting, 
obscure  interruption  to  whatever  is  perceived  beyond  it. 
A little  attention  directed  to  this  fact  will  convince  every 
one  of  its  universality,  and  prove  beyond  dispute  that 
objects  at  unequal  distances  cannot  be  seen  together,  not 
from  the  intervention  of  air  or  mist,  but  from  the  impos- 
sibility of  the  rays  proceeding  from  both,  converging  to 
the  same  focus,  so  that  the  whole  impression,  either  of 
one  or  the  other,  must  necessarily  be  confused,  indis- 
tinct, and  inadequate. 

But,  be  it  observed  (and  I have  only  to  request  that 
whatever  I say  may  be  tested  by  immediate  experiment), 
the  difference  of  focus  necessary  is  greatest  within  the 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


293 


first  five  hundred  yards,  and  therefore,  though  it  is  totally 
impossible  to  see  an  object  ten  yards  from  the  eye,  and 
one  a quarter  of  a mile  beyond  it,  at  the  §3  Especially 
same  moment,  it  is  perfectly  possible  to  euch  as  ar®  b0,th 
see  one  a quarter  of  a mile  off,  and  one  near* 
five  miles  beyond  it,  at  the  same  moment.  The  conse- 
quence of  this  is,  practically,  that  in  a real  landscape,  we 
*can  see  the  whole  of  what  would  be  called  the  middle 


distance  and  distance  together,  with  facility  and  clear- 
ness ; but  while  we  do  so  we  can  see  nothing  in  the  fore- 
ground beyond  a vague  and  indistinct  arrangement  of 
lines  and  colors ; and  that  if,  on  the  contrary,  we  look  at 
any  foreground  object,  so  as  to  receive  a distinct  impres- 
sion of  it,  the  distance  and  middle  distance  become  all 
disorder  and  mystery. 

And  therefore,  if  in  a painting  our  foreground  is  any- 
thing, our  distance  must  be  nothing,  and  vice  versa  ; for 
if  we  represent  our  near  and  distant  ob-  ^ ^ 
jects  as  giving  both  at  Once  that  distinct  therefore,  either 

. iii  i*i  . . the  foreground  or 

image  to  the  eye,  which  we  receive  m distance  must  be 
. n , , I i i n partially  sacrificed. 

nature  from  each,  when  we  look  at  them 

separately ; * and  if  we  distinguish  them  from  each  other 


* This  incapacity  of  the  eye  must  not  be  confounded  with  its  in- 
capability to  comprehend  a large  portion  of  lateral  space  at  once.  We 
indeed  can  see,  at  any  one  moment,  little  more  than  one  point,  the  ob- 
jects beside  it  being  confused  and  indistinct ; but  we  need  pay  no  at- 
tention to  this  in  art,  because  we  can  see  just  as  little  of  the  picture  as 
we  can  of  the  landscape  without  turning  the  eye,  and  hence  any  slur- 
ring or  confusing  of  one  part  of  it,  laterally,  more  than  another,  is  not 
founded  on  any  truth  of  nature,  but  is  an  expedient  of  the  artist — and 
often  an  excellent  and  desirable  one — to  make  the  eye  rest  where  he 
wishes  it.  But  as  the  touch  expressive  of  a distant  object  is  as  near 
upon  the  canvas  as  that  expressive  of  a near  one,  both  are  seen 
distinctly  and  with  the  same  focus  of  the  eye,  and  hence  an  immediate 
contradiction  of  nature  results,  unless  one  or  other  be  given  with  an 
artificial  and  increased  indistinctness,  expressive  of  the  appearance  pe- 
culiar to  the  unadapted  focus.  On  the  other  hand,  it  must  be  noted  that 
the  greater  part  of  the  effect  above  described  is  consequent  not  on  vari- 


294 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


only  by  the  air-tone ; and  indistinctness  dependent  on 
positive  distance,  we  violate  one  of  the  most  essential 
principles  of  nature ; we  represent  that  as  seen  at  once 
which  can  only  be  seen  by  two  separate  acts  of  seeing*, 
and  tell  a falsehood  as  gross  as  if  we  had  represented 
four  sides  of  a cubic  object  visible  together. 

Now,  to  this  fact  and  principle,  no  landscape  painter 
of  the  old  school,  as  far  as  I remember,  ever  paid  the 
* . rru'  x.  t slightest  attention.  Finishing  their  fore- 
being  done  by  the  grounds  clearly  and  sharply,  and  with  vig- 

old  masters,  they  ^ J . . & 

could  not  express  orous  impression  on  the  eye,  giving  even 
the  leaves  of  their  bushes  and  grass  with 
perfect  edge  and  shape,  they  proceeded  into  the  distance 
with  equal  attention  to  what  they  could  see  of  its  details 
— they  gave  all  that  the  eye  can  perceive  ip  a distance, 
when  it  is  fully  and  entirely  devoted  to  it,  and  therefore, 
though  masters  of  aerial  tone,  though  employing  every 
expedient  that  art  could  supply  to  conceal  the  intersec- 
tion of  lines,  though  caricaturing  the  force  and  shadow 
of  near  objects  to  throw  them  close  upon  the  eye,  they 
never  succeeded  in  truly  representing  space.  Turner  in- 
troduced a new  era  in  landscape  art,  by 
L6tkteuha“°s^  showing  that  the  foreground  might  be 
cS?^ngnouftutW8  sunk  for  the  distance,  and  that  it  was  pos- 
principTe.  sible  to  express  immediate  proximity  to 

the  spectator,  without  giving  anything  like  complete- 
ness to  the  forms  of  the  near  objects.  This  is  not  done 
by  slurred  or  soft  lines,  observe,  (always  the  sign  of 
vice  in  art,)  but  by  a decisive  imperfection,  a firm,  but 
partial  assertion  of  form,  which  the  eye  feels  indeed  to 
be  close  home  to  it,  and  yet  cannot  rest  upon,  or  cling 
to,  nor  entirely  understand,  and  from  which  it  is  driven 
away  of  necessity,  to  those  parts  of  distance  on  which  it 
is  intended  to  repose.  And  this  principle,  originated  by 

ation  of  focus,  but  on  the  different  angle  at  which  near  objects  are  seen 
by  each  of  the  two  eyes,  when  both  are  directed  towards  the  distance. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


2D5 

Turner,  though  fully  carried  out  by  him  only,  has  yefc 
been  acted  on  with  judgment  and  success  by  several  less 
powerful  artists  of  the  English  school.  Some  six  years 
ago,  the  brown  moorland  foregrounds  of  Copley  Field- 
ing were  very  instructive  in  this  respect.  Not  a line  in 
them  was  made  out,  not  a single  object  clearly  distin- 
guishable. Wet  broad  sweeps  of  the  brush,  sparkling, 
careless,  and  accidental  as  nature  herself,  always  truthful 
as  far  as  they  went,  implying  knowledge,  though  not  ex- 
pressing it,  suggested  everything,  while  they  represented 
nothing.  But  far  off  into  the  mountain  distance  came 
the  sharp  edge  and  the  delicate  form ; the  whole  inten- 
tion and  execution  of  the  picture  being  guided  and  ex- 
erted where  the  great  impression  of  space  and  size  was 
to  be  given.  The  spectator  was  compelled  to  go  forward 
into  the  waste  of  hills — there,  where  the  sun  broke  wild 
upon  the  moor,  he  must  walk  and  wander — he  could  not 
stumble  and  hesitate  over  the  near  rocks,  nor  stop  to 
botanize  on  the  first  inches  of  his  path.*  And  the  im- 
pression of  these  pictures  was  always  great  and  endur- 
ing, as  it  was  simple  and  truthful.  I do  not  know  any- 
thing in  art  which  has  expressed  more  completely  the 
force  and  feeling  of  nature  in  these  particular  scenes. 
And  it  is  a farther  illustration  j*  of  the  principle  we  are 
insisting  upon,  that  where,  as  in  some  of  his  later  works, 
he  has  bestowed  more  labor  on  the  foreground,  the  pict- 
ure has  lost  both  in  space  and  sublimity.  And  among 
artists  in  general,  who  are  either  not  aware  of  the  prin- 
ciple, or  fear  to  act  upon  it,  (for  it  requires  no  small 

* There  is  no  inconsistency,  observe,  between  this  passage  and  what 
was  before  asserted  respecting  the  necessity  of  botanical  fidelity^ — 
where  the  foreground  is  the  object  of  attention.  Compare  Part  II. 
Sec.  I.  Chap.  VII.  § 10  : — “To  paint  mist  rightly,  space  rightly,  and 
light  rightly,  it  may  be  often  necessary  to  paint  nothing  else  rightly.  ” 

f Hardly.  It  would  have  been  so  only  had  the  recently  finished 
foregrounds  been  as  accurate  in  detail  as  they  are  abundant : they  are 
painful,  I believe,  not  from  their  finish,  but  their  falseness. 


296 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


courage,  as  well  as  skill,  to  treat  a foreground  with  that 
indistinctness  and  mystery  which  they  have  been  accus- 
tomed to  consider  as  characteristic  of  distance,)  the  fore- 
ground is  not  only  felt,  as  every  landscape  painter  will 
confess,  to  be  the  most  embarrassing  and  unmanageable 
part  of  the  picture,  but,  in  ninety -nine  cases  out  of  a hun- 
dred, will  go  near  to  destroy  the  effect  of  the  rest  of  the 
composition.  Thus  Callcott’s  Trent  is  severely  injured 
by  the  harsh  group  of  foreground  figures ; and  Stanfield 
very  rarely  gets  through  an  Academy  picture  without 
destroying  much  of  its  space,  by  too  much  determination 
of  near  form;  while  Harding  constantly  sacrifices  his 
distance,  and  compels  the  spectator  to  dwell  on  the  fore- 
ground altogether,  though  indeed,  with  such  foregrounds 
as  he  gives  us,  we  are  most  happy  so  to  do.  But  it  is 
§ 7 Especially  of  in  Turner  only  that  we  see  a bold  and  de- 
Turner.  cisive  choice  of  the  distance  and  middle 

distance,  as  his  great  object  of  attention  ,*  and  by  him 
only  that  the  foreground  is  united  and  adapted  to  it,  not 
by  any  want  of  drawing,  or  coarseness,  or  carelessness  of 
execution,  but  by  the  most  precise  and  beautiful  indica- 
tion or  suggestion  of  just  so  much  of  even  the  minutest 
forms  as  the  eye  can  see  when  its  focus  is  not  adapt- 
ed to  them.  And  herein  is  another  reason  for  the 
vigor  and  wholeness  of  the  effect  of  Turner’s  works  at 
any  distance ; while  those  of  almost  all  other  artists  are 
sure  to  lose  space  as  soon  as  we  lose  sight  of  the  de- 
tails. 

And  now  we  see  the  reason  for  the  singular,  and  to  the 
ignorant  in  art,  the  offensive  execution  of  Turner’s  fig- 
§ 8.  Justification  ures.  I do  not  mean  to  assert  that  there 
dra^ngWinnTu?-  is  any  reason  whatsoever,  for  bad  drawing, 
ner’s  figures.  (though  in  landscape  it  matters  exceed- 
ingly little ;)  but  that  there  is  both  reason  and  necessity 
for  that  leant  of  drawing  which  gives  even  the  near- 
est figures  round  balls  with  four  pink  spots  in  them  in- 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


297 


stead  of  faces,  and  four  dashes  of  the  brush  instead  of 
hands  and  feet  ; for  it  is  totally  impossible  that  if  the 
eye  be  adapted  to  receive  the  rays  proceeding  from  the 
utmost  distance,  and  some  partial  impression  from  all 
the  distances,  it  should  be  capable  of  perceiving  more 
of  the  forms  and  features  of  near  figures  than  Turner 
gives.  And  how  absolutely  necessary  to  the  faithful 
representation  of  space  this  indecision  really  is,  might 
be  proved  with  the  utmost  ease  by  any  one  who  had 
veneration  enough  for  the  artist  to  sacrifice  one  of  his  pict- 
ures to  his  fame  ; who  would  take  some  one  of  his  works 
in  which  the  figures  were  most  incomplete,  and  have 
them  painted  in  by  any  of  our  delicate  and  first-rate  figure 
painters,  absolutely  preserving  every  color  and  shade  of 
Turner’s  group,  so  as  not  to  lose  one  atom  of  the  com- 
position, but  giving  eyes  for  the  pink  spots,  and  feet 
for  the  white  ones.  Let  the  picture  be  so  exhibited  in 
the  Academy,  and  even  novices  in  art  would  feel  at  a 
glance  that  its  truth  of  space  was  gone,  that  every  one 
of  its  beauties  and  harmonies  had  undergone  decompo- 
sition, that  it  was  now  a grammatical  solecism,  a paint- 
ing of  impossibilities,  a thing  to  torture  the  eye,  and 
offend  the  mind. 


CHAPTEB  V. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE SECONDLY,  AS  ITS  APPEARANCE  IS 
DEPENDENT  ON  THE  POWER  OF  THE  EYE. 

In  the  last  chapter,  we  have  seen  how  indistinctness  of 
individual  distances  becomes  necessary  in  order  to  ex- 
press the  adaptation  of  the  eye  to  one  or  other  of  them ; 
§ i.  The  peculiar  we  have  now  to  examine  that  kind  of  in- 
pe^dentforfthe  re-  distinctness  which  is  dependent  on  real 
fromthe°eye!);iect8  retirement  of  the  object  even  when  the  fo- 
cus of  the  eye  is  fully  concentrated  upon 
it.  The  first  kind  of  indecision  is  that  which  belongs 
to  all  objects  which  the  eye  is  not  adapted  to,  whether 
near  or  far  off : the  second  is  that  consequent  upon  the 
want  of  power  in  the  eye  to  receive  a clear  image  of 
objects  at  a great  distance  from  it,  however  attentively 
it  may  regard  them. 

Draw  on  a piece  of  white  paper,  a square  and  a circle, 
each  about  a twelfth  or  eighth  of  an  inch  in  diameter, 
and  blacken  them  so  that  their  forms  may  be  very  dis- 
tinct ; place  your  paper  against  the  wall  at  the  end  of 
the  room,  and  retire  from  it  a greater  or  less  distance 
according  as  you  have  drawn  the  figures  larger  or 
smaller.  You  will  come  to  a point  where,  though  you 
can  see  both  the  spots  with  perfect  plainness,  you  can- 
not tell  which  is  the  square  and  which  the  circle. 

Now  this  takes  place  of  course  with  every  object  in  a 
landscape,  in  proportion  to  its  distance  and  size.  The 
definite  forms  of  the  leaves  of  a tree,  however  sharply 
and  separately  they  may  appear  to  come  against  the  sky, 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


299 


are  quite  indistinguishable  at  fifty  yards  off,  and  the 
form  of  everything  becomes  confused  before  we  finally 
lose  sight  of  it.  Now  if  the  character  of  § 2.  causes  con- 
an  object,  say  the  front  of  a house,  be  ex-  iSiationof de- 
plained  by  a variety  of  forms  in  it,  as 
the  shadows  in  the  tops  of  the  windows,  the  lines  of  the 
architraves,  the  seams  of  the  masonry,  etc. ; these  lesser 
details,  as  the  object  falls  into  distance,  become  con- 
fused and  undecided,  each  of  them  losing  their  definite 
forms,  but  all  being  perfectly  visible  as  something,  a 
white  or  a dark  spot  or  stroke,  not  lost  sight  of,  observe, 
but  yet  so  seen  that  we  cannot  tell  what  they  are.  As 
the  distance  increases,  the  confusion  becomes  greater, 
until  at  last  the  whole  front  of  the  house  becomes  merely 
a fiat,  pale  space,  in  which,  however,  there  is  still  observ- 
able a kind  of  richness  and  checkering,  caused  by  the 
details  in  it,  which,  though  totally  merged  and  lost  in 
the  mass,  have  still  an  influence  on  the  texture  of  that 
mass ; until  at  last  the  whole  house  itself  becomes  a 
mere  light  or  dark  spot  which  we  can  plainly  see,  but 
cannot  tell  what  it  is,  nor  distinguish  it  from  a stone  or 
any  other  object. 

Now  what  I particularly  wish  to  insist  upon,  is  the 
state  of  vision  in  which  all  the  details  of  an  object  are 
seen,  and  yet  seen  in  such  confusion  and  § 3 instances  m 
disorder  that  we  cannot  in  the  least  tell  various  ob^8Cts“ 
what  they  are,  or  what  they  mean.  It  is  not  mist  be- 
tv/een  us  and  the  object,  still  less  is  it  shade,  still  less  is 
it  want  of  character;  it  is  a confusion,  a mystery,  an 
interfering  of  undecided  lines  with  each  other,  not  a 
diminution  of  their  number ; window  and  door,  architrave 
and  frieze,  all  are  there : it  is  no  cold  and  vacant  mass, 
it  is  full  and  rich  and  abundant,  and  yet  you  cannot  see 
a single  form  so  as  to  know  what  it  is.  Observe  your 
friend’s  face  as  he  is  coming  up  to  you ; first  it  is  nothing 
more  than  a white  spot ; now  it  is  a face,  but  you  cannot 


300 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


see  the  two  eyes,  nor  the  mouth,  even  as  spots ; you  see 
a confusion  of  lines,  a something  which  you  know  from 
experience  to  be  indicative  of  a face,  and  yet  you  can- 
not tell  how  it  is  so.  Now  he  is  nearer,  and  you  can 
see  the  spots  for  the  eyes  and  mouth,  but  they  are  not 
blank  spots  neither;  there  is  detail  in  them;  you  can- 
not see  the  lips,  nor  the  teeth,  nor  the  brows,  and  yet 
you  see  more  than  mere  spots ; it  is  a mouth  and  an  eye, 
and  there  is  light  and  sparkle  and  expression  in  them, 
but  nothing  distinct.  Now  he  is  nearer  still,  and  you 
can  see  that  he  is  like  your  friend,  but  you  cannot  tell 
whether  he  is  or  not ; there  is  a vagueness  and  indecision 
of  line  still.  Now  you  are  sure,  but  even  yet  there  are 
a thousand  things  in  his  face  which  have  their  effect  in 
inducing  the  recognition,  but  which  you  cannot  see  so 
as  to  know  what  they  are. 

Changes  like  these,  and  states  of  vision  corresponding 
to  them,  take  place  with  each  and  all  of  the  objects  of 
„ , m , nature,  and  two  great  principles  of  truth 

§ 4.  Two  great  ’ . i . 

resultant  truths ; are  deducible  from  their  observation.  First, 
never di^tmct, and  place  an  object  as  close  to  the  eye  as  you 
like,  there  is  always  something  in  it  which 
you  cannot  see,  except  in  the  hinted  and  mysterious 
manner  above  described.  You  can  see  the  texture  of  a 
piece  of  dress,  but  you  cannot  see  the  individual  threads 
which  compose  it,  though  they  are  all  felt,  and  have 
each  of  them  influence  on  the  eye.  Secondly,  place  an 
object  as  far  from  the  eye  as  you  like,  and  until  it 
becomes  itself  a mere  spot,  there  is  always  something 
in  it  which  you  can  see,  though  only  in  the  hinted 
manner  above  described.  Its  shadows  and  lines  and 
local  colors  are  not  lost  sight  of  as  it  retires ; they  get 
mixed  and  indistinguishable,  but  they  are  still  there, 
and  there  is  a difference  always  perceivable  between  an 
object  possessing  such  details  and  a flat  or  vacant  space. 
The  grass  blades  of  a meadow  a mile  off,  are  so  far  dis- 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


301 


cernible  that  there  will  be  a marked  difference  between 
its  appearance  and  that  of  a piece  of  wood  painted 
green.  And  thus  nature  is  never  distinct  and  never 
vacant,  she  is  always  mysterious,  but  always  abundant ; 
you  always  see  something,  but  you  never  see  all. 

And  thus  arise  that  exquisite  finish  and  fulness  which 
God  has  appointed  to  be  the  perpetual  source  of  fresh 
pleasure  to  the  cultivated  and  observant  eye, — a finish 
which  no  distance  can  render  invisible,  and  no  nearness 
comprehensible;  which  in  every  stone,  every  bough, 
every  cloud,  and  every  wave  is  multiplied  around  us, 
forever  presented,  and  forever  exhaustless.  And  hence 
in  art,  every  space  or  touch  in  which  we  can  see  every- 
thing, or  in  which  we  can  see  nothing,  is  false.  Nothing 
can  be  true  which  is  either  complete  or  vacant;  every 
touch  is  false  which  does  not  suggest  more  than  it  repre- 
sents, and  every  space  is  false  which  represents  nothing. 

Now,  I would  not  wish  for  any  more  illustrative  or 
marked  examples  of  the  total  contradiction  of  these  two 
great  principles,  than  the  landscape  works  §6>  complete 
of  the  old  masters,  taken  as  a body : — the  Sele^^rincS 
Dutch  masters  furnishing  the  cases  of  see-  TheyeoiremalMSr 
ing  everything,  and  the  Italians  of  seeing  dis^inct  or  vacant- 
nothing.  The  rule  with  both  is  indeed  the  same,  differ- 
ently applied.  “You  shall  see  the  bricks  in  the  wall, 
and  be  able  to  count  them,  or  you  shall  see  nothing  but 
a dead  flat ; ” but  the  Dutch  give  you  the  bricks,  and  the 
Italians  the  flat.  Nature’s  rule  being  the  precise  reverse 
— “ You  shall  never  be  able  to  count  the  bricks,  but  you 
shall  never  see  a dead  space.” 

Take,  for  instance,  the  street  in  the  centre  of  the  really 
great  landscape  of  Poussin  (great  in  feeling  at  least) 
marked  260  in  the  Dulwich  Gallery.  The 

, , . §6.  Instances 

houses  are  dead  square  masses  with  a light  from  Nicholas 

side  and  a dark  side,  and  black  touches  for 

windows.  There  is  no  suggestion  of  anything  in  any  of 


302 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


the  spaces,  the  light  wall  is  dead  gray,  the  dark  wall 
dead  gray,  and  the  windows  dead  black.  How  differently 
would  nature  have  treated  us.  She  would  have  let  us 
see  the  Indian  corn  hanging  on  the  walls,  and  the  image 
of  the  Yirgin  at  the  angles,  and  the  sharp,  broken,  broad 
shadows  of  the  tiled  eaves,  and  the  deep  ribbed  tiles 
with  the  doves  upon  them,  and  the  carved  Homan  capital 
built  into  the  wall,  and  the  white  and  blue  stripes  of  the 
mattresses  stuffed  out  of  the  windows,  and  the  flapping 
corners  of  the  mat  blinds.  All  would  have  been  there ; 
not  as  such,  not  like  the  corn,  nor  blinds,  nor  tiles,  not 
to  be  comprehended  nor  understood,  but  a confusion  of 
yellow  and  black  spots  and  strokes,  carried  far  too  fine 
for  the  eye  to  follow,  microscopic  in  its  minuteness,  and 
filling  every  atom  and  part  of  space  with  mystery,  out  of 
which  would  have  arranged  itself  the  general  impression 
of  truth  and  life. 

Again,  take  the  distant  city  on  the  right  bank  of  the 
river  in  Claude’s  Marriage  of  Isaac  and  Hebecca,  in  the 

National  Gallery.  I have  seen  many  cities 

§ 7.  From  Claude.  . , . „ , , . „ T 

m my  me,  and  drawn  not  a lew;  and  I 

have  seen  many  fortifications,  fancy  ones  included,  which 
frequently  supply  us  with  very  new  ideas  indeed,  es- 
pecially in  matters  of  proportion ; but  I do  not  remem- 
ber ever  having  met  with  either  a city  or  a fortress  en- 
tirely composed  of  round  towers  of  various  heights  and 
sizes,  all  fae-similes  of  each  other,  and  absolutely  agree- 
ing in  the  number  of  battlements.  I have,  indeed,  some 
faint  recollection  of  having  delineated  such  an  one  in 
the  first  page  of  a spelling-book  when  I was  four  years 
old ; but,  somehow  or  other,  the  dignity  and  perfection 
of  the  ideal  were  not  appreciated,  and  the  volume  was 
not  considered  to  be  increased  in  value  by  the  frontis- 
piece. Without,  however,  venturing  to  doubt  the  entire 
sublimity  of  the  same  ideal  as  it  occurs  in  Claude,  let  us 
consider  how  nature,  if  she  had  been  fortunate  enough 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


303 


to  originate  so  perfect  a conception,  would  have  managed 
it  in  its  details.  Claude  has  permitted  us  to  see  every 
battlement,  and  the  first  impulse  we  feel  upon  looking 
at  the  picture  is  to  count  how  many  there  are.  Nature 
would  have  given  us  a peculiar  confused  roughness  of 
the  upper  lines,  a multitude  of  intersections  and  spots, 
which  we  should  have  known  from  experience  was  indic- 
ative of  battlements,  but  which  we  might  as  well  have 
thought  of  creating  as  of  counting.  Claude  has  given 
you  the  walls  below  in  one  dead  void  of  uniform  gray. 
There  is  nothing  to  be  seen,  nor  felt,  nor  guessed  at  in 
it ; it  is  gray  paint  or  gray  shade,  whichever  you  may 
choose  to  call  it,  but  it  is  nothing  more.  Nature  would 
have  let  you  see,  nay,  would  have  compelled  you  to  see, 
thousands  of  spots  and  lines,  not  one  to  be  absolutely 
understood  or  accounted  for,  but  yet  all  characteristic 
and  different  from  each  other ; breaking  lights  on  shat- 
tered stones,  vague  shadows  from  waving  vegetation, 
irregular  stains  of  time  and  weather,  mouldering  hollows, 
sparkling  casements — all  would  have  been  there — none, 
indeed,  seen  as  such,  none  comprehensible  or  like  them- 
selves, but  all  visible;  little  shadows,  and  sparkles,  and 
scratches,  making  that  whole  space  of  color  a transparent, 
palpitating,  various  infinity. 

Or  take  one  of  Poussin’s  extreme  distances,  such  as 
that  in  the  Sacrifice  of  Isaac.  It  is  luminous,  retiring, 
delicate  and  perfect  in  tone,  and  is  quite  § 8 Aad  G 
complete  enough  to  deceive  and  delight  Poussin, 
the  careless  eye  to  which  all  distances  are  alike ; nay,  it 
is  perfect  and  masterly,  and  absolutely  right  if  we  con- 
sider it  as  a sketch, — as  a first  plan  of  a distance,  after- 
wards to  be  carried  out  in  detail.  But  we  must  remem- 
ber that  all  these  alternate  spaces  of  gray  and  gold  are 
not  the  landscape  itself,  but  the  treatment  of  it — not  its 
substance,  but  its  light  and  shade.  They  are  just  what 
nature  would  cast  over  it,  and  write  upon  it  with  every 


SO  4 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


cloud,  but  which  she  would  cast  in  play,  and  without 
carefulness,  as  matters  of  the  very  smallest  possible  im- 
portance. All  her  work  and  her  attention  would  be 
given  to  bring  out  from  underneath  this,  and  through 
this,  the  forms  and  the  material  character  which  this  can 
only  be  valuable  to  illustrate,  not  to  conceal.  Every 
one  of  those  broad  spaces  she  would  linger  over  in 
protracted  delight,  teaching  you  fresh  lessons  in  every 
hairsbreadth  of  it,  and  pouring  her  fulness  of  invention 
into  it,  until  the  mind  lost  itself  in  following  her, — now 
fringing  the  dark  edge  of  the  shadow  with  a tufted  line 
of  level  forest — now  losing  it  for  an  instant  in  a breath 
of  mist — then  breaking  it  with  the  white  gleaming  angle 
of  a narrow  brook — then  dwelling  upon  it  again  in  a gen- 
tle, mounded,  melting  undulation,  over  the  other  side  of 
which  she  would  carry  you  down  into  a dusty  space  of 
soft,  crowded  light,  with  the  hedges,  and  the  paths,  and 
the  sprinkled  cottages  and  scattered  trees  mixed  up  and 
mingled  together  in  one  beautiful,  delicate,  impenetra- 
ble mystery — sparkling  and  melting,  and  passing  away 
into  the  sky,  without  one  line  of  distinctness,  or  one  in- 
stant of  vacancy. 

Now  it  is,  indeed,  impossible  for  the  painter  to  follow 
all  this — he  cannot  come  up  to  the  same  degree  and  or- 
der of  infinity — but  he  can  give  us  a lesser 
Live  necessityp(in  kind  of  infinity.  He  has  not  one-thou- 

laudscape  paint-  , ->  . 1 

in g,  of  fuinesa  sandth  part  oi  the  space  to  occupy  which 
nature  has;  but  he  can,  at  least,  leave  no 
part  of  that  space  vacant  and  unprofitable.  If  nature 
carries  out  her  minutiae  over  miles,  he  has  no  excuse  for 
generalizing  in  inches.  And  if  he  will  only  give  us  all 
he  can,  if  he  will  give  us  a fulness  as  complete  and  as 
mysterious  as  nature’s,  we  will  pardon  him  for  its  being 
the  fulness  of  a cup  instead  of  an  ocean.  But  we  will 
not  pardon  him,  if,  because  he  has  not  the  mile  to  occu- 
py, he  will  not  occupy  the  inch,  and  because  he  has  fewer 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


305 


means  at  his  command,  will  leave  half  of  those  in  his 
power  unexerted.  Still  less  will  we  pardon  him  for  mis- 
taking1 the  sport  of  nature  for  her  labor,  and  for  follow- 
ing her  only  in  her  hour  of  rest,  without  observing  how 
she  has  worked  for  it.  After  spending  centuries  in  rais- 
ing the  forest,  and  guiding  the  river,  and  modelling 
the  mountain,  she  exults  over  her  work  in  buoyancy 
of  spirit,  with  playful  sunbeam  and  flying  cloud;  but 
the  painter  must  go  through  the  same  labor,  or  he 
must  not  have  the  same  recreation.  Let  him  chisel  his 
rock  faithfully,  and  tuft  his  forest  delicately,  and  then 
we  will  allow  him  his  freaks  of  light  and  shade,  and 
thank  him  for  them ; but  we  will  not  be  put  off  with 
the  play  before  the  lesson — with  the  adjunct  instead 
of  the  essence  — with  the  illustration  instead  of  the 
fact. 

I am  somewhat  anticipating  my  subject  here,  because 
I can  scarcely  help  answering  the  objections  which  I 
know  must  arise  in  the  minds  of  most  g 10  Breadth  is 
readers,  especially  of  those  who  are  par-  not  vacancy. 
tially  artistical,  respecting  “ generalization,”  “ breadth,” 
“ effect,”  etc.  It  were  to  be  wished  that  our  writers  on 
art  would  not  dwell  so  frequently  on  the  necessity  of 
breadth,  without  explaining  what  it  means  ; and  that  we 
had  more  constant  reference  made  to  the  principle  which 
I can  only  remember  having  seen  once  clearly  explained 
and  insisted  on, — that  breadth  is  not  vacancy.  General- 
ization is  unity,  not  destruction  of  part ; and  composi- 
tion is  not  annihilation,  but  arrangement  of  materials. 
The  breadth  which  unites  the  truths  of  nature  with  her 
harmonies,  is  meritorious  and  beautiful ; but  the  breadth 
which  annihilates  those  truths  by  the  million,  is  not 
painting  nature,  but  painting  over  her.  And  so  the 
masses  which  result  from  right  concords  and  relations  of 
details,  are  sublime  and  impressive;  but  the  masses 
which  result  from  the  eclipse  of  details  are  contemptible 
20 


306 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


and  painful.*  And  we  shall  show,  in  following  parts  of 
the  work,  that  distances  like  those  of  Poussin  are  mere 
meaningless  tricks  of  clever  execution,  which,  when  once 
discovered,  the  artist  may  repeat  over  and  over  again, 
with  mechanical  contentment  and  perfect  satisfaction, 
both  to  himself  and  to  his  superficial  admirers,  with 
no  more  exertion  of  intellect  nor  awakening  of  feeling 
than  any  tradesman  has  in  multiplying  some  ornamental 
pattern  of  furniture.  Be  this  as  it  may,  however,  (for  we 
cannot  enter  upon  the  discussion  of  the  question  here,) 
the  falsity  and  imperfection  of  such  distances  admit  of 
no  dispute.  Beautiful  and  ideal  they  may  be ; true  they 
are  not:  and  in  the  same  way  we  might  go  through 
every  part  and  portion  of  the  works  of  the  old  masters, 
showing  throughout,  either  that  you  have  every  leaf  and 
blade  of  grass  staring  defiance  to  the  mystery  of  nature, 
or  that  you  have  dead  spaces  of  absolute  vacuity,  equally 
determined  in  their  denial  of  her  fulness.  And  even  if 
we  ever  find  (as  here  and  there,  in  their  better  pictures, 
we  do)  changeful  passages  of  agreeable  playing  color,  or 
mellow  and  transparent  modulations  of  mysterious  at- 
mosphere, even  here  the  touches,  though  satisfactory  to 
the  eye,  are  suggestive  of  nothing, — they  are  character- 
less,— they  have  none  of  the  peculiar  expressiveness  and 
meaning  by  which  nature  maintains  the  variety  and  in- 
terest even  of  what  she  most  conceals.  She  always  tells 
a story,  however  hintedly  and  vaguely;  each  of  her 
touches  is  different  from  all  the  others ; and  we  feel  with 
every  one,  that  though  we  cannot  tell  what  it  is,  it  can- 
not be  anything ; while  even  the  most  dexterous  dis- 
tances of  the  old  masters  pretend  to  secrecy  without 

* Of  course  much  depends  upon  the  kind  of  detail  so  lost.  An 
artist  may  generalize  the  trunk  of  a tree,  where  he  only  loses  lines  of 
bark,  and  do  us  a kindness  ; but  he  must  not  generalize  the  details  of 
a champaign,  in  which  there  is  a history  of  creation.  The  full  dis- 
cussion of  the  subject  belongs  to  a future  part  of  our  investigation. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


307 


haying*  anything  to  conceal,  and  are  ambiguous,  not  from 
the  concentration  of  meaning,  but  from  the  want  of  it. 

And  now,  take  up  one  of  Turner’s  distances,  it  matters 
not  which,  or  of  what  kind, — drawing  or  painting,  small 
or  great,  done  thirty  years  ago,  or  for  last  § n The  fulnesg 
year’s  Academy,  as  you  like;  say  that  of  Tu^n^^is- 
the  Mercury  and  Argus,  and  look  if  every  tances- 
fact  which  I have  just  been  pointing  out  in  nature  be 
not  carried  out  in  it.  Abundant,  beyond  the  power  of 
the  eye  to  embrace  or  follow,  vast  and  various,  beyond 
the  power  of  the  mind  to  comprehend,  there  is  yet  not 
one  atom  in  its  whole  extent  and  mass  which  does  not 
suggest  more  than  it  represents;  nor  does  it  suggest 
vaguely,  but  in  such  a manner  as  to  prove  that  the  con- 
ception of  each  individual  inch  of  that  distance  is  abso- 
lutely clear  and  complete  in  the  master’s  mind,  a sepa- 
rate picture  fully  worked  out : but  yet,  clearly  and  fully 
as  the  idea  is  formed,  just  so  much  of  it  is  given,  and 
no  more,  as  nature  would  have  allowed  us  to  feel  or 
see ; just  so  much  as  would  enable  a spectator  of  expe- 
rience and  knowledge  to  understand  almost  every  mi- 
nute fragment  of  separate  detail,  but  appears,  to  the  un- 
practised and  careless  eye,  just  what  a distance  of  nat- 
ure’s own  would  appear,  an  unintelligible  mass.  Not 
one  line  out  of  the  millions  there  is  without  meaning, 
yet  there  is  not  one  which  is  not  affected  and  disguised 
by  the  dazzle  and  indecision  of  distance.  No  form  is 
made  out,  and  yet  no  form  is  unknown. 

Perhaps  the  truth  of  this  system  of  drawing  is  better 
to  be  understood  by  observing  the  distant  character  of 
rich  architecture,  than  of  any  other  object.  § 12  Farther 
Go  to  the  top  of  Highgate  Hill  on  a clear  ciiteitumi  d w- 
summer  morning  at  five  o’clock,  and  look  ins* 
at  Westminster  Abbey.  You  will  receive  an  impression 
of  a building  enriched  with  multitudinous  vertical  lines. 
Try  to  distinguish  one  of  those  lines  all  the  way  down 


308 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


from  the  one  next  to  it : Yon  cannot.  Try  to  count 
them : You  cannot.  Try  to  make  out  the  beginning*  or 
end  of  any  one  of  them : You  cannot.  Look  at  it  gener- 
ally, and  it  is  all  symmetry  and  arrangement.  Look  at  it 
in  its  parts,  and  it  is  all  inextricable  confusion.  Am  not  I, 
at  this  moment,  describing  a piece  of  Turner’s  drawing, 
with  the  same  words  by  which  I describe  nature  ? And 
what  would  one  of  the  old  masters  have  done  with  such  a 
building  as  this  in  his  distance  ? Either  he  would  only 
have  given  the  shadows  of  the  buttresses,  and  the  light 
and  dark  sides  of  the  two  towers,  and  two  dots  for  the 
windows ; or  if  more  ignorant  and  more  ambitious,  he  had 
attempted  to  render  some  of  the  detail,  it  would  have 
been  done  by  distinct  lines, — would  have  been  broad  car- 
icature of  the  delicate  building,  felt  at  once  to  be  false, 
ridiculous,  and  offensive.  His  most  successful  effort 
would  only  have  given  us,  through  his  carefully  toned 
atmosphere,  the  effect  of  a colossal  parish  church,  with- 
out one  line  of  carving  on  its  economic  sides.  Turner, 
and  Turner  only,  would  follow  and  render  on  the  canvas 
that  mystery  of  decided  line, — that  distinct,  sharp,  visi- 
ble, but  unintelligible  and  inextricable  richness,  which, 
examined  part  by  part,  is  to  the  eye  nothing  but  con- 
fusion and  defeat,  which,  taken  as  a whole,  is  all  unity, 
symmetry,  and  truth.* 

Nor  is  this  mode  of  representation  true  only  with  re- 
spect to  distances.  Every  object,  however  near  the  eye, 

has  something  about  it  which  you  cannot 

jects  as  well  as  dis-  see,  and  which  brings  the  mystery  oi  dis- 
tances. i • i 

tance  even  into  every  part  and  portion  oi 
what  we  suppose  ourselves  to  see  most  distinctly.  Stand 

* Vide,  for  illustration,  Fontainebleau  in  the  Illustrations  to  Scott ; 
Vignette  at  opening  of  Human  Life,  in  Rogers’s  Poems:  Venice,  in 
the  Italy  ; Chateau  de  Blois  ; the  Rouen,  and  Pont  Neuf,  Paris,  in  the 
Rivers  of  France.  The  distances  of  all  the  Academy  pictures  of  Ven- 
ice, especially  the  Shy  lock,  are  most  instructive. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE . 


809 


in  the  Piazza  di  St.  Marco  at  Venice,  as  close  to  the 
church  as  you  can,  without  losing*  sight  of  the  top  of  it. 
Look  at  the  capitals  of  the  columns  on  the  second  story. 
You  see  that  they  are  exquisitely  rich,  carved  all  over. 
Tell  me  their  patterns : You  cannot.  Tell  me  the  direc- 
tion of  a single  line  in  them : You  cannot.  Yet  you  see 
a multitude  of  lines,  and  you  have  so  much  feeling  of  a 
certain  tendency  and  arrangement  in  those  lines,  that 
you  are  quite  sure  the  capitals  are  beautiful,  and  that 
they  are  all  different  from  each  other.  But  I defy  you 
to  make  out  one  single  line  in  any  one  of 
them'  Now  go  to  Canaletto’s  painting  of  and  ’falsehood  of 
this  church,  in  the  Palazzo  Manfrini,  taken 
from  the  very  spot  on  which  you  stood.  How  much  has 
he  represented  of  all  this  ? A black  dot  under  each  capi- 
tal for  the  shadow,  and  a yellow  one  above  it  for  the 
light.  There  is  not  a vestige  nor  indication  of  carving 
or  decoration  of  any  sort  or  kind. 

Very  different  from  this,  but  erring  on  the  other  side, 
is  the  ordinary  drawing  of  the  architect,  who  gives  the 
principal  lines  of  the  design  with  delicate  clearness  and 
precision,  but  with  no  uncertainty  or  mystery  about 
them ; which  mystery  being  removed,  all  space  and  size 
are  destroyed  with  it,  and  we  have  a drawing  of  a model, 
not  of  a building.  But  in  the  capital  lying  on  the  fore- 
ground in  Turner’s  Daphne  hunting  with  Leucippus,  we 
have  the  perfect  truth.  Not  one  jag  of  the  acanthus 
leaves  is  absolutely  visible,  the  lines  are  all  disorder,  but 
you  feel  in  an  instant  that  all  are  there.  And  so  it  will 
invariably  be  found  through  every  portion  of  detail  in 
his  late  and  most  perfect  works. 

But  if  there  be  this  mystery  and  inexhaustible  finish 
merely  in  the  more  delicate  instances  of  architectural 
decoration,  how  much  more  in  the  cease-  g 16>  stm. greater 
less  and  incomparable  decoration  of  nature.  iS\a?lsc?pefifore^ 
The  detail  of  a single  weedy  bank  laughs  grounds* 


310 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


the  carving  of  ages  to  scorn.  Ever 7 leaf  and  stalk  has  a 
design  and  tracery  upon  it, — every  knot  of  grass  an  in- 
tricacy of  shade  which  the  labor  of  years  could  never 
imitate,  and  which,  if  such  labor  could  follow  it  out  even 
to  the  last  fibres  of  the  leaflets,  would  yet  be  falsely  rep- 
resented, for,  as  in  all  other  cases  brought  forward,  it  is 
not  clearly  seen,  but  confusedly  and  mysteriously.  That 
which  is  nearness  for  the  bank,  is  distance  for  its  details ; 
and  however  near  it  may  be,  the  greater  part  of  those 
details  are  still  a beautiful  incomprehensibility.* 

* It  is  to  be  remembered,  however,  that  these  truths  present  them- 
selves in  all  probability  under  very  different  phases  to  individuals  of 
different  powers  of  vision.  Many  artists  who  appear  to  generalize 
rudely  or  rashly  are  perhaps  faithfully  endeavoring  to  render  the  ap- 
pearance which  nature  bears  to  sight  of  limited  range.  Others  may 
be  led  by  their  singular  keenness  of  sight  into  inexpedient  detail. 
Works  which  are  painted  for  effect  at  a certain  distance  must  be  al- 
ways seen  at  disadvantage  by  those  whose  sight  is  of  different  range 
from  the  painter’s.  Another  circumstance  to  which  I ought  above  to 
have  alluded  is  the  scale  of  the  picture  ; for  there  are  different  degrees 
of  generalization  and  different  necessities  of  symbolism,  belonging  to 
every  scale  ; the  stipple  of  the  miniature  painter  would  be  offensive  on 
features  of  the  life  size,  and  the  leaves  which  Tintoret  may  articulate 
on  a canvas  of  sixty  feet  by  twenty-five,  must  be  generalized  by  Tur- 
ner on  one  of  four  by  three.  Another  circumstance  of  some  impor- 
tance is  the  assumed  distance  of  the  foreground  ; many  landscape 
painters  seem  to  think  their  nearest  foreground  is  always  equally  near, 
v/hereas  its  distance  from  the  spectator  varies  not  a little,  being  always 
at  least  its  own  calculable  breadth  from  side  to  side  as  estimated  by 
figures  or  any  other  object  of  known  size  at  the  nearest  part  of  it. 
With  Claude  almost  always  ; with  Turner  often,  as  in  the  Daphne  and 
Leucippus,  this  breadth  is  forty  or  fifty  yards  ; and  as  the  nearest  fore- 
ground object  must  then  be  at  least  that  distance  removed,  and  may 
be  much  more,  it  is  evident  that  no  completion  of  close  detail  is  in 
such  cases  allowable,  (see  here  another  proof  of  Claude’s  erroneous 
practice  ;)  with  Titian  and  Tintoret,  on  the  contrary,  the  foreground 
is  rarely  more  than  five  or  six  yards  broad,  and  its  objects  therefore 
being  only  five  or  six  yards  distant  are  entirely  detailed. 

None  of  these  circumstances,  however,  in  anywise  affect  the  great 
principle,  the  confusion  of  detail  taking  place  sooner  or  later  in  all 
cases.  I ought  to  have  noted,  however,  that  many  of  the  pictures  of 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE, 


311 


Hence,  throughout  the  picture,  the  expression  of  space, 
and  size  is  dependent  upon  obscurity,  united  with,  or 
rather  resultant  from,  exceeding  fulness.  We  destroy 
both  space  and  size,  either  by  the  vacancy,  § 16  gpace  ard 
which  affords  us  no  measure  of  space,  or  are  destroyed 
by  the  distinctness,  which  gives  us  a false  ne&s  and  by  va- 
one.  The  distance  of  Poussin,  having  no 
indication  of  trees,  nor  of  meadows,  nor  of  character  of 
any  kind,  may  be  fifty  miles  off,  or  may  be  five ; we  can- 
not tell — we  have  no  measure,  and  in  consequence,  no 
vivid  impression.  But  a middle  distance  of  Hobbima’s 
involves  a contradiction  in  terms ; it  states  a distance 
by  perspective,  which  it  contradicts  by  distinctness  of 
detail. 

A single  dusty  roll  of  Turner’s  brush  is  more  truly  ex- 
pressive of  the  infinity  of  foliage,  than  the  niggling  of 
Hobbima  could  have  rendered  his  canvas,  § 17.  swift  execu- 
if  he  had  worked  on  it  till  doomsday,  perfection  SofUde- 
What  Sir  J.  Reynolds  says  of  the  mis- 
placed  labor  of  his  Homan  acquaintance  on  separate 

Turner  in  which  the  confused  drawing  has  been  least  understood, 
have  been  luminous  twilights;  and  that  the  uncertainty  of  twilight  is 
therefore  added  to  that  of  general  distance.  In  the  evenings  of  the 
south  it  not  unfrequently  happens  that  objects  touched  with  the  re- 
flected light  of  the  western  sky,  continue  even  for  the  space  of  half  an 
hour  after  sunset,  glowing,  ruddy,  and  intense  in  color,  and  almost  as 
bright  as  if  they  were  still  beneath  actual  sunshine,  even  till  the  moon 
begins  to  cast  a shadow  : but  in  spite  of  this  brilliancy  of  color  all  the 
details  become  ghostly  and  ill-defined.  This  is  a favorite  moment  of 
Turner’s,  and  he  invariably  characterizes  it,  not  by  gloom,  but  by  un- 
certainty of  detail.  I have  never  seen  the  effect  of  clear  twilight  thor- 
oughly rendered  by  art ; that  effect  in  which  all  details  are  lost,  while 
intense  clearness  and  light  are  still  felt  in  the  atmosphere,  in  which 
nothing  is  distinctly  seen,  and  yet  it  is  not  darkness,  far  less  mist, 
that  is  the  cause  of  concealment.  Turner’s  efforts  at  rendering  this 
effect  (as  the  Wilderness  of  Engedi,  Assos,  Chateau  de  Blois,  Caer- 
laverock,  and  others  innumerable,)  have  always  some  slight  appear- 
ance of  mistiness,  owing  to  the  indistinctness  of  details  ; but  it  remains 
to  be  shown  that  any  closer  approximation  to  the  effect  is  possible. 


312 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE . 


leaves  of  foliage,  and  the  certainty  he  expresses  that  a 
man  who  attended  to  general  character  would  in  five 
minutes  produce  a more  faithful  representation  of  a tree, 
than  the  unfortunate  mechanist  in  as  many  years,  is  thus 
perfectly  true  and  well  founded;  but  this  is  not  be- 
cause details  are  undesirable,  but  because  they  are  best 
§18.  Finish  is  far  £iven  swift  execution,  and  because,  in- 
lSndscape68?!^^  ^dually,  they  cannot  be  given  at  all.  But 
in  historical  sub-  it  should  be  observed  (though  we  shall  be 
better  able  to  insist  upon  this  point  in  fu- 
ture) that  much  of  harm  and  error  has  arisen  from  the 
supposition  and  assertions  of  swift  and  brilliant  histori- 
cal painters,  that  the  same  principles  of  execution  are 
entirely  applicable  to  landscape,  which  are  right  for  the 
figure.  The  artist  who  falls  into  extreme  detail  in  draw- 
ing the  human  form,  is  apt  to  become  disgusting  rather 
than  pleasing.  It  is  more  agreeable  that  the  general 
outline  and  soft  hues  of  flesh  should  alone  be  given, 
than  its  hairs,  and  veins,  and  lines  of  intersection.  And 
even  the  most  rapid  and  generalizing  expression  of  the 
human  body,  if  directed  by  perfect  knowledge,  and  rig- 
idly faithful  in  drawing,  will  commonly  omit  very  little 
of  what  is  agreeable  or  impressive.  But  the  exclusively 
generalizing  landscape  painter  omits  the  whole  of  what 
is  valuable  in  his  subject, — omits  thoughts,  designs,  and 
beauties  by  the  million,  everything,  indeed,  which  can 
furnish  him  with  variety  or  expression.  A distance  in 
Lincolnshire,  or  in  Lombardy,  might  both  be  generalized 
into  such  blue  and  yellow  stripes  as  we  see  in  Poussin ; 
but  whatever  there  is  of  beauty  or  character  in  either, 
depends  altogether  on  our  understanding  the  details, 
and  feeling  the  difference  between  the  morasses  and 
ditches  of  the  one,  and  the  rolling  sea  of  mulberry  trees 
of  the  other.  And  so  in  every  part  of  the  subject.  I 
have  no  hesitation  in  asserting  that  it  is  impossible  to  go 
too  fine,  or  think  too  much  about  details  in  landscape,  so 


OF  TRUTH  OF  SPACE. 


313 


that  they  be  rightly  arranged  and  rightly  massed ; but 
that  it  is  equally  impossible  to  render  anything  like  the 
fulness  or  the  space  of  nature,  except  by  that  mystery 
and  obscurity  of  execution  which  she  herself  uses,  and 
in  which  Turner  only  has  followed  her. 

We  have  now  rapidly  glanced  at  such  general  truths  of 
nature  as  can  be  investigated  without  much  knowledge 
* of  what  is  beautiful.  Questions  of  arrange- 

, . , ^ T §19.  Recapitula- 

ment,  massing,  and  generalization,  1 pre-  tion  of  the  sec- 
fer  leaving  untouched,  until  we  know 
something  about  details,  and  something  about  what  is 
beautiful.  All  that  is  desirable,  even  in  these  mere  tech- 
nical and  artificial  points,  is  based  upon  truths  and  hab- 
its of  nature;  but  we  cannot  understand  those  truths 
until  we  are  acquainted  with  the  specific  forms  and 
minor  details  which  they  affect,  or  out  of  which  they 
arise.  I shall,  therefore,  proceed  to  examine  the  invalu- 
able and  essential  truths  of  specific  character  and  form — - 
briefly  and  imperfectly,  indeed,  as  needs  must  be,  but 
yet  at  length  sufficient  to  enable  the  reader  to  pursue,  if 
he  will,  the  subject  for  himself. 


SECTION  m. 


OP  TRUTH  OF  SKIES. 


CHAPTER  I. 

OF  THE  OPEN  SKY. 

It  is  a strange  thing  how  little  in  general  people 
know  about  the  sky.  It  is  the  part  of  creation  in  which 
nature  has  done  more  for  the  sake  of  pleasing  man,  more 
for  the  sole  and  evident  purpose  of  talk- 

o i lie  p6cniisr  a - _ , _ # _ # 

s ky^o^h^p lea  ing  ^im  and  teaching  him,  than  m any 

and  teaching  of  other  of  her  works,  and  it  is  just  the  part 
in  which  we  least  attend  to  her.  There 
are  not  many  of  her  other  works  in  which  some  more 
material  or  essential  purpose  than  the  mere  pleasing  of 
man  is  not  answered  by  every  part  of  their  organiza- 
tion ; but  every  essential  purpose  of  the  sky  might,  so  far 
as  we  know,  be  answered,  if  once  in  three  days,  or  there- 
abouts, a great  ugly  black  rain  cloud  were  brought  up 
over  the  blue,  and  everything  well  watered,  and  so  all 
left  blue  again  till  next  time,  with  perhaps  a film  of 
morning  and  evening  mist  for  dew.  And  instead  of  this, 
there  is  not  a moment  of  any  day  of  our  lives,  when 
nature  is  not  producing  scene  after  scene,  picture  after 
picture,  glory  after  glory,  and  working  still  upon  such 
exquisite  and  constant  principles  of  the  most  perfect 
beauty,  that  it  is  quite  certain  it  is  all  done  for  us, 
and  intended  for  our  perpetual  pleasure.  And  every 


OF  THE  OPEN  SKY. 


315 


man,  wherever  placed,  however  far  from  other  sources  of 
interest  or  of  beauty,  has  this  doing  for  him  constantly. 
The  noblest  scenes  of  the  earth  can  be  seen  and  known 
but  by  few ; it  is  not  intended  that  man  should  live  al- 
ways in  the  midst  of  them,  he  injures  them  by  his  pres- 
ence, he  ceases  to  feel  them  if  he  be  always  with  them  ; 
but  the  sky  is  for  all ; bright  as  it  is,  it  is  not  “ too 
. bright,  nor  good,  for  human  nature’s  daily  food ; ” it  is 
fitted  in  all  its  functions  for  the  perpetual  comfort  and 
exalting  of  the  heart,  for  the  soothing  it  and  purifying  it 
from  its  dross  and  dust.  Sometimes  gentle,  sometimes 
capricious,  sometimes  awful,  never  the  same  for  two  mo- 
ments together;  almost  human  in  its  passions,  almost 
spiritual  in  its  tenderness,  almost  divine  in  its  infinity, 
its  appeal  to  wdiat  is  immortal  in  us,  is  as  distinct,  as 
its  ministry  of  chastisement  or  of  blessing  § 2.  The  careiess- 
to  what  is  mortal  is  essential.  And  yet  we  lellons^re^re- 
never  attend  to  it,  we  never  make  it  a sub-  ceived* 
ject  of  thought,  but  as  it  has  to  do  with  our  animal  sen- 
sations ; we  look  upon  all  by  wThich  it  speaks  to  us  more 
clearly  than  to  brutes,  upon  all  which  bears  witness  to 
the  intention  of  the  Supreme,  that  we  are  to  receive 
more  from  the  covering  vault  than  the  light  and  the  dew 
which  we  share  with  the  weed  and  the  wrorm,  only  as  a 
succession  of  meaningless  and  monotonous  accident,  too 
common  and  too  vain  to  be  worthy  of  a moment  of  watch- 
fulness, or  a glance  of  admiration.  If  in  our  moments  of 
utter  idleness  and  insipidity,  we  turn  to  the  sky  as  a last 
resource,  which  of  its  phenomena  do  we  speak  of  ? One 
says  it  has  been  wTet,  and  another  it  has  been  windy, 
and  another  it  has  been  wTarm.  Who,  among  the  wiiole 
chattering  crowd,  can  tell  me  of  the  forms  and  the  preci- 
pices of  the  chain  of  tall  white  mountains  that  girded  the 
horizon  at  noon  yesterday  ? Who  saw  the  narrow  sun- 
beam that  came  out  of  the  south,  and  smote  upon  their 
summits  until  they  melted  and  mouldered  away  in  a dust 


316 


OF  THE  OPEN  SET. 


of  blue  rain?  Who  saw  the  dance  of  the  dead  clouds 
when  the  sunlight  left  them  last  night,  and  the  west 
wind  blew  them  before  it  like  withered  leaves  f All  has 
passed,  unregretted  as  unseen ; or  if  the  apathy  be  ever 
shaken  off,  even  for  an  instant,  it  is  only  by  what  is  gross, 
§ 3.  The  most  es-  or  extraordinary ; and  yet  it  is  not 

J®8'  in  the  broad  and  tierce  manifestations  of 
tlest-  the  elemental  energies,  not  in  the  clash  of 

the  hail,  nor  the  drift  of  the  whirlwind,  that  the  highest 
characters  of  the  sublime  are  developed.  God  is  not  in 
the  earthquake,  nor  in  the  tire,  but  in  the  still  small 
voice.  They  are  but  the  blunt  and  the  low  faculties  of 
our  nature,  which  can  only  be  addressed  through  lamp- 
black and  lightning.  It  is  in  quiet  and  subdued  pas- 
sages of  unobtrusive  majesty,  the  deep,  and  the  calm, 
and  the  perpetual, — that  which  must  be  sought  ere  it  is 
seen,  and  loved  ere  it  is  understood, — things  which  the 
angels  work  out  for  us  daily,  and  yet  vary  eternally, 
which  are  never  wanting,  and  never  repeated,  which  are 
to  be  found  always  yet  each  found  but  once;  it  is 
through  these  that  the  lesson  of  devotion  is  chiefly 
taught,  and  the  blessing  of  beauty  given.  These  are 
what  the  artist  of  highest  aim  must  study ; it  is  these, 
§ 4.  Many  of  our  by  the  combination  of  which  his  ideal  is  to 
getSr0fconven-  created;  these,  of  which  so  little  notice 
tionaL  is  ordinarily  taken  by  common  observers, 

that  I fully  believe,  little  as  people  in  general  are  con- 
cerned with  art,  more  of  their  ideas  of  sky  are  derived 
from  pictures  than  from  reality,  and  that  if  we  could  ex- 
amine the  conception  formed  in  the  minds  of  most  edu- 
cated persons  when  we  talk  of  clouds,  it  would  frequently 
be  found  composed  of  fragments  of  blue  and  white  remi- 
niscences of  the  old  masters. 

I shall  enter  upon  the  examination  of  what  is  true  in 
sky  at  greater  length,  because  it  is  the  only  part  of  a pict- 
ure of  which  all,  if  they  will,  may  be  competent  judges. 


OF  THE  OPEN  SKY. 


317 


What  I may  have  to  assert  respecting  the  rocks  of  Salva- 
tor, or  the  boughs  of  Claude,  I can  scarcely  prove,  except 
to  those  whom  I can  immure  for  a month  or  two  in  the 
fastnesses  of  the  Apennines,  or  guide  in  their  summer 
walks  again  and  again  through  the  ravines  of  Sorrento. 
But  what  I say  of  the  sky  can  be  brought  to  an  immedi- 
ate test  by  all,  and  I write  the  more  decisively,  in  the 
hope  that  it  may  be  so. 

Let  us  begin  then  with  the  simple  open  blue  of  the 
sky.  This  is  of  course  the  color  of  the  pure  atmospheric 
air,  not  the  aqueous  vapor,  but  the  pure 

, -i  t •/  . L . i i i §5-  Nature  and 

azote  and  oxygen,  and  it  is  the  total  color  essential  qualities 
of  the  whole  mass  of  that  air  between  us  of  the  open 
and  the  void  of  space.  It  is  modified  by  the  varying 
quantity  of  aqueous  vapor  suspended  in  it,  whose  color, 
in  its  most  imperfect,  and  therefore  most  visible,  state  of 
solution,  is  pure  white,  (as  in  steam,)  which  receives,  like 
any  other  white,  the  warm  hues  of  the  rays  of  the  sun, 
and,  according  to  its  quantity  and  imperfect  solution, 
makes  the  sky  paler,  and  at  the  same  time  more  or  less 
gray,  by  mixing  warm  tones  with  its  blue.  This  gray 
aqueous  vapor,  when  very  decided,  becomes  mist,  and 
when  local,  cloud.  Hence  the  sky  is  to  be  considered  as 
a transparent  blue  liquid,  in  which,  at  various  elevations, 
clouds  are  suspended,  those  clouds  being  themselves  only 
particular  visible  spaces  of  a substance  with  which  the 
whole  mass  of  this  liquid  is  more  or  less  impregnated. 
Now,  we  all  know  this  perfectly  well,  and  §(!.  its  common 
yet  we  so  far  forget  it  in  practice,  that  we  vith  clouds- 
little  notice  the  constant  connection  kept  up  by  nature 
between  her  blue  and  her  clouds,  and  we  are  not  offended 
by  the  constant  habit  of  the  old  masters,  of  considering 
the  blue  sky  as  totally  distinct  in  its  nature,  and  far  sep- 
arated from  the  vapors  which  float  in  it.  With  them, 
cloud  is  cloud,  and  blue  is  blue,  and  no  kind  of  connec- 
tion between  them  is  ever  hinted  at.  The  sky  is  thought 


318 


OF  THE  OPEN  SKY. 


of  as  a clear,  high  material  dome,  the  clouds  as  separate 
bodies,  suspended  beneath  it,  and  in  consequence,  how- 
ever delicate  and  exquisitely  removed  in  tone  their  skies 

ST.  Its  exceeding  maJr  be,  you  always  . look  at  them,  not 
depth*  through  them.  Now,  if  there  be  one  char- 

acteristic of  the  sky  more  valuable  or  necessary  to  be 
rendered  than  another,  it  is  that  which  Wordsworth  has 
given  in  the  second  book  of  the  Excursion : — 

“ The  chasm  of  sky  above  my  head 
Is  Heaven’s  profoundest  azure.  Iso  domain 
For  fickle,  short-lived  clouds,  to  occupy, 

Or  to  pass  through  ; — but  rather  an  abyss 
In  which  the  everlasting  stars  abide, 

And  whose  soft  gloom,  and  boundless  depth,  might  tempt 
The  curious  eye  to  look  for  them  by  day.” 

And,  in  his  American  Notes,  I remember  Dickens  notices 
the  same  truth,  describing  himself  as  lying  drowsily  on 
the  barge  deck,  looking  not  at,  but  through  the  sky.  And 
if  you  look  intensely  at  the  pure  blue  of  a serene  sky, 
you  will  see  that  there  is  a variety  and  fulness  in  its  very 
repose.  It  is  not  flat  dead  color,  but  a deep,  quivering, 
transparent  body  of  penetrable  air,  in  which  you  trace  or 
imagine  short,  falling  spots  of  deceiving’  light,  and  dim 
shades,  faint,  veiled  vestiges  of  dark  vapor ; and  it  is  this 
trembling  transparency  which  our  great  modern  master 
§ 8.  These  quaii-  has  especially  aimed  at  and  given.  His 
gwenrby "modern  blue  is  never  laid  on  in  smooth  coats,  but 
masters.  in  preaping-5  mingling,  melting  hues,  a 

quarter  of  an  inch  of  which,  cut  off  from  all  the  rest  of 
the  picture,  is  still  spacious,  still  infinite  and  immeasur- 
able in  depth.  It  is  a painting  of  the  air,  something 
into  which  you  can  see,  through  the  parts  which  are  near 
you  into  those  which  are  far  off ; something  which  has  no 
surface,  and  through  which  we  can  plunge  far  and  farther, 
and  without  stay  or  end,  into  the  profundity  of  space 


OF  THE  OPEN  SKY . 


319 


whereas,  with  all  the  old  landscape  painters,  except 
Claude,  you  may  indeed  go  a long  way  before  you  come 
to  the  sky,  but  you  will  strike  hard  against  it  at  last.  A 
perfectly  genuine  and  untouched  sky  of  § 9 And  by 
Claude  is  indeed  most  perfect,  and  beyond  clande* 
praise,  in  all  qualities  of  air ; though  even  with  him,  I 
often  feel  rather  that  there  is  a great  deal  of  pleasant  aii 
between  me  and  the  firmament,  than  that  the  firmament 
itself  is  only  air.  I do  not  mean,  however,  to  say  a word 
against  such  skies  as  that  of  the  Enchanted  Castle,  or 
that  marked  30  in  the  National  Gallery,  or  one  or  two 
which  I remember  at  Rome  ; but  how  little  and  by  how 
few  these  fine  passages  of  Claude  are  appreciated,  is 
sufficiently  proved  by  the  sufferance  of  such  villainous 
and  unpalliated  copies  as  we  meet  with  all  over  Europe, 
like  the  Marriage  of  Isaac,  in  our  own  Gallery,  to  remain 
under  his  name.  In  fact,  I do  not  remember  above  ten 
pictures  of  Claude’s,  in  which  the  skies,  whether  re- 
painted or  altogether  copies,  or  perhaps  from  Claude’s 
hand,  but  carelessly  laid  in,  like  that  marked  241,  Dul- 
wich Gallery,  were  not  fully  as  feelingless  and  false  as 
those  of  other  masters ; while,  with  the  Poussins,  there 
are  no  favorable  exceptions.  Their  skies  are  systemati- 
cally wrong ; take,  for  instance,  the  sky  of  the  Sacrifice 
of  Isaac.  It  is  here  high  noon,  as  is  shown  by  the  shadow 
of  the  figures ; and  what  sort  of  color  is  the  sky  at  the 
top  of  the  picture  ? Is  it  pale  and  gray  with  heat,  full 
of  sunshine,  and  unfathomable  in  depth?  gio.  Total  absence 
On  the  contrary,  it  is  of  a pitch  of  dark-  S^PhysFcai 
ness  which,  except  on  the  Mont  Blanc  or  Srtreatment8of 
Chimborazo,  is  as  purely  impossible  as  °Peasky- 
color  can  be.  He  might  as  well  have  painted  it  coal 
black ; and  it  is  laid  on  with  a dead  coat  of  flat  paint, 
having  no  one  quality  or  resemblance  of  sky  about  it. 
It  cannot  have  altered,  because  the  land  horizon  is  as 
delicate  and  tender  in  tone  as  possible,  and  is  evidently 


320 


OF  THE  OPEN  SKY . 


unchanged ; and  to  complete  the  absurdity  of  the  whole 
thing,  this  color  holds  its  own,  without  graduation  or 
alteration,  to  within  three  or  four  degrees  of  the  horizon, 
where  it  suddenly  becomes  bold  and  unmixed  yellow. 
Now  the  horizon  at  noon  may  be  yellow  when  the  whole 
sky  is  covered  with  dark  clouds,  and  only  one  open  streak 
of  light  left  in  the  distance  from  which  the  whole  light 
proceeds ; but  with  a clear,  open  sky,  and  opposite  the 
sun,  at  noon,  such  a yellow  horizon  as  this  is  physically 
impossible.  Even  supposing  that  the  upper  part  of  the 
sky  were  pale  and  warm,  and  that  the  transition  from  the 
one  hue  to  the  other  were  effected  imperceptibly  and 
gradually,  as  is  invariably  the  case  in  reality,  instead  of 
taking  place  within  a space  of  two  or  three  degrees ; — 
even  then,  this  gold  yellow  would  be  altogether  absurd ; 
but  as  it  is,  we  have  in  this  sky  (and  it  is  a fine  picture — 
one  of  the  best  of  Gaspar’s  that  I know,)  a notable  exam- 
ple of  the  truth  of  the  old  masters — two  impossible 
colors  impossibly  united!  Find  such  a color  in  Turner’s 
noonday  zenith  as  the  blue  at  the  top,  or  such  a color  at 
a noonday  horizon  as  the  yellow  at  the  bottom,  or  such 
a connection  of  any  colors  whatsoever  as  that  in  the 
centre,  and  then  you  may  talk  about  his  being  false  to 
nature  if  you  will.  Nor  is  this  a solitary  instance ; it  is 
Gaspar  Poussin’s  favorite  and  characteristic  effect.  I 
remember  twenty  such,  most  of  them  worse  than  this,  in 
„ , the  downright  surface  and  opacity  of  blue. 

§11.  Errors  of  . _ ® ^ 

cuyp  in  gradua-  Again,  look  at  the  large  Cuyp  m the 
Dulwich  Gallery,  which  Mr.  Hazlitt  con- 
siders the  “ finest  in  the  world,”  and  of  which  he  very 
complimentarily  says,  “ The  tender  green  of  the  valleys, 
the  gleaming  lake,  the  purple  light  of  the  hills,  have  an 
effect  like  the  down  on  an  unripe  nectarine ! ” I ought  to 
have  apologized  before  now,  for  not  having  studied  suffi- 
ciently in  Covent  Garden  to  be  provided  with  terms  of 
correct  and  classical  criticism.  One  of  my  friends  begged 


OF  THE  OPEN  SKY. 


321 


me  to  observe,  the  other  day,  that  Claude  was  “ pulpy ; ” 
another  added  the  yet  more  gratifying  information  that 
he  was  “juicy;”  and  it  is  now  happily  discovered  that 
Cuyp  is  “ downy.”  Now  I dare  say  that  the  sky  of  this 
first-rate  Cuyp  is  very  like  an  unripe  nectarine : all  that 
I have  to  say  about  it  is,  that  it  is  exceedingly  unlike  a 
sky.  The  blue  remains  unchanged  and  ungraduated  over 
. three-fourths  of  it,  down  to  the  horizon  ; while  the  sun, 
in  the  left-hand  corner,  is  surrounded  with  a halo,  first  of 
yellow,  and  then  of  crude  pink,  both  being  separated 
from  each  other,  and  the  last  from  the  blue,  as  sharply  as 
the  belts  of  a rainbow,  and  both  together  not  ascending 
ten  degrees  in  the  sky.  Now  it  is  difficult  to  conceive 
how  any  man  calling  himself  a painter  could  impose 
such  a thing  on  the  public,  and  still  more  how  the  public 
can  receive  it,  as  a representation  of  that  sunset  purple 
which  invariably  extends  its  influence  to  the  zenith,  so 
that  there  is  no  pure  blue  anywhere,  but  a purple  increas- 
ing in  purity  gradually  down  to  its  point  of  greatest 
intensity,  (about  forty-five  degrees  from  the  horizon,) 
and  then  melting  imperceptibly  into  the  gold,  the  three 
colors  extending  their  influence  over  the  whole  sky  ; so 
that  throughout  the  whole  sweep  of  the  heaven,  there  is 
no  one  spot  where  the  color  is  not  in  an  equal  state  of 
transition  — passing  from  gold  into  orange,  from  that 
into  rose,  from  that  into  purple,  from  that  into  blue,  with 
absolute  equality  of  change,  so  that  in  no  place  can  it  be 
said,  “ here  it  changes,”  and  in  no  place,  “ iiere  it  is  un- 
changing.” This  is  invariably  the  case.  There  is  no  such 
thing — there  never  was,  and  never  will  be  such  a thing, 
while  God’s  heaven  remains  as  it  is  made — as  a serene, 
sunset  sky,  with  its  purple  and  rose  in  belts  about  the 
sun. 

Such  bold,  broad  examples  of  ignorance  as  these  would 
soon  set  aside  all  the  claims  of  the  professed  landscape 
painters  to  truth,  with  whatever  delicacy  of  color  or  ma- 
21 


322 


OF  THE  OPEN  SKY. 


§ 12.  The  exceed- 
ing value  of  the 
skies  of  the  early 
Italian  and  Dutch 
schools.  Their 
qualities  are  unat- 
tainable in  mod- 
ern times. 


nipulation  they  may  be  disguised.  But  there  are  some 
skies,  of  the  Dutch  school,  in  which  clearness  and  cool- 
ness have  been  aimed  at,  instead  of  depth ; 
and  some  introduced  merely  as  back- 
grounds to  the  historical  subjects  of  the 
older  Italians,  which  there  is  no  matching 
in  modern  times ; one  would  think  angels 
had  painted  them,  for  all  is  now  clay  and  oil  in  compari- 
son. It  seems  as  if  we  had  totally  lost  the  art,  for  surely 
otherwise,  however  little  our  painters  might  aim  at  it  or 
feel  it,  they  would  touch  the  chord  sometimes  by  acci- 
dent ; but  they  never  do,  and  the  mechanical  incapacity 
is  still  more  strongly  evidenced  by  the  muddy  struggles 
of  the  unhappy  Germans,  who  have  the  feeling,  partially 
strained,  artificial,  and  diseased,  indeed,  but  still  genuine 
enough  to  bring  out  the  tone,  if  they  had  the  mechani- 
cal means  and  technical  knowledge.  But,  however  they 
were  obtained,  the  clear  tones  of  this  kind  of  the  older 
Italians  are  glorious  and  enviable  in  the  highest  degree ; 
and  we  shall  show,  when  we  come  to  speak  of  the  beauti- 
ful, that  they  are  one  of  the  most  just  grounds  of  the 
fame  of  the  old  masters. 

But  there  is  a series  of  phenomena  connected  with  the 
open  blue  of  the  sky,  which  we  must  take  especial  notice 
of,  as  it  is  of  constant  occurrence  in  the 
works  of  Turner  and  Claude,  the  effects, 
namely,  of  visible  sunbeams.  It  will  be 
necessary  for  us  thoroughly  to  understand  the  circum- 
stances under  which  such  effects  take  place. 

Aqueous  vapor  or  mist,  suspended  in  the  atmosphere, 
becomes  visible  exactly  as  dust  does  in  the  air  of  a 
room.  In  the  shadows  you  not  only  cannot  see  the  dust 
itself,  because  unillumined,  but  you  can  see  other  objects 
through  the  dust  without  obscurity,  the  air  being  thus 
actually  rendered  more  transparent  by  a deprivation  of 
light.  Where  a sunbeam  enters,  every  particle  of  dust 


§ 13.  Phenomena 
of  visible  sun- 
beams. Their  nat- 
ure and  cause. 


OF  THE  OPEN  SKY. 


323 


becomes  visible,  and  a palpable  interruption  to  the  sight, 
so  that  a transverse  sunbeam  is  a real  obstacle  to  the 
vision,  you  cannot  see  things  clearly  through  it. 

In  the  same  way,  wherever  vapor  is  illuminated  by 
transverse  rays  there  it  becomes  visible  as  a whiteness 
more  or  less  affecting  the  purity  of  the  blue,  and  destroy- 
ing it  exactly  in  proportion  to  the  degree  of  illumina- 
' tion.  But  where  vapor  is  in  shade,  it  has  very  little 
effect  on  the  sky,  perhaps  making  it  a little  deeper  and 
grayer  than  it  otherwise  would  be,  but  not  itself,  unless 
very  dense,  distinguishable  or  felt  as  mist. 

The  appearance  of  mist  or  whiteness  in  the  blue  of  the 
sky,  is  thus  a circumstance  which  more  or  less  accom- 
panies sunshine,  and  which,  supposing  the  §14.  They  are 
quantity  of  vapor  constant,  is  greatest  in  £fsl  JSTSSS 
the  brightest  sunlight.  When  there  are  ^jVom 

no  clouds  in  the  sky,  the  whiteness,  as  it  J.apfsr’  ^Tth^ut 
affects  the  whole  sky  equally,  is  not  par-  clouds* 
ticularly  noticeable.  But  when  there  are  clouds  between 
us  and  the  sun,  the  sun  being  low,  those  clouds  cast 
shadows  along  and  through  the  mass  of  suspended  vapor. 
Within  the  space  of  these  shadows,  the  vapor,  as  above 
stated,  becomes  transparent  and  invisible,  and  the  sky 
appears  of  a pure  blue.  But  where  the  sunbeams  strike, 
the  vapor  becomes  visible  in  the  form  of  the  beams, 
occasioning  those  radiating  shafts  of  light  which  are  one 
of  the  most  valuable  and  constant  accompaniments  of  a 
low  sun.  The  denser  the  mist,  the  more  distinct  and 
sharp -edged  will  these  rays  be ; when  the  air  is  very  clear, 
they  are  mere  vague,  flushing,  gradated  passages  of 
light ; when  it  is  very  thick,  they  are  keen-edged  and 
decisive  in  a high  degree. 

We  see  then,  first,  that  a quantity  of  mist  dispersed 
through  the  whole  space  of  the  sky,  is  necessary  to  this 
phenomenon  ; and  secondly,  that  what  we  usually  think 
of  as  beams  of  greater  brightness  than  the  rest  of  the 


324 


OF  THE  OPEN  SKY. 


sky,  are  in  reality  only  a part  of  that  sky  in  its  natural 
state  of  illumination,  cut  off  and  rendered  brilliant  by 
the  shadows  from  the  clouds, — that  these  shadows  are 
in  reality  the  source  of  the  appearance  of  beams, — that, 
therefore,  no  part  of  the  sky  can  present  such  an  appear- 
ance, except  when  there  are  broken  clouds  between  it 
and  the  sun ; and  lastly,  that  the  shadows  cast  from  such 
clouds  are  not  necessarily  gray  or  dark,  but  very  nearly 
of  the  natural  pure  blue  of  a sky  destitute  of  vapor. 

Now,  as  it  has  been  proved  that  the  appearance  of 
beams  can  only  take  place  in  a part  of  the  sky  which  has 
§ 15.  Erroneous  clouds  between  it  and  the  sun,  it  is  evident 
representation  % that  no  appearance  of  beams  can  ever  be- 
brCthePoid°meas-  from  the  orb  itself,  except  when  there 
ter8,  is  a cloud  or  solid  body  of  some  kind  be- 

tween us  and  it ; but  that  such  appearances  will  almost 
invariably  begin  on  the  dark  side  of  some  of  the  clouds 
around  it,  the  orb  itself  remaining  the  centre  of  a broad 
blaze  of  united  light.  Wordsworth  has  given  us  in  two 
lines,  the  only  circumstances  under  which  rays  can  ever 
appear  to  have  origin  in  the  orb  itself : — 

“But  rays  of  light, 

Now  suddenly  diverging  from  the  orb, 

Retired  behind  the  mountain  tops,  or  veiled 
By  the  dense  air , shot  upwards.” 

Excursion,  Book  IX. 

And  Turner  has  given  us  the  effect  magnificently  in  the 
Dartmouth  of  the  River  Scenery.  It  is  frequent  among 
the  old  masters,  and  constant  in  Claude ; though  the 
latter,  from  drawing  his  beams  too  fine,  represents  the 
effect  upon  the  dazzled  eye  rather  than  the  light  which 
actually  exists,  and  approximates  very  closely  to  the 
ideal  which  we  see  in  the  sign  of  the  Rising  Sun ; nay,  I 
am  nearly  sure  that  I remember  cases  in  which  he  has 
given  us  the  diverging  beam,  without  any  cloud  or  hill 


OF  THE  OPEN  SKY. 


325 


interfering  with  the  orb.  It  may,  perhaps,  be  somewhat 
difficult  to  say  how  far  it  is  allowable  to  represent  that 
kind  of  ray  which  is  seen  by  the  dazzled  B 

. . . 1 1 j § 16-  The  ray 

eve.  It  is  very  certain  that  we  never  which  appears  in 

. the  dazzled  eye 

look  towards  a bright  sun  without  see-  should  not  be 

. . , represented. 

mg  glancing  rays  issue  irom  it ; but  it  is 
equally  certain  that  those  rays  are  no  more  real  existences 
than  the  red  and  blue  circles  which  we  see  after  having 
been  so  dazzled,  and  that  if  we  are  to  represent  the  rays 
we  ought  also  to  cover  our  sky  with  pink  and  blue 
circles.  I should  on  the  whole  consider  it  utterly  false 
in  principle  to  represent  the  visionary  beam,  and  that 
we  ought  only  to  show  that  which  has  actual  existence. 
Such  we  find  to  be  the  constant  practice  of  § 17.  The  prac- 
Turner.  Even  where,  owing  to  interposed  hS  keen  percep- 
clouds,  he  has  beams  appearing  to  issue  delicate  tphe?o°m- 
from  the  orb  itself,  they  are  broad  bursts  ena  of  rays* 
of  light,  not  spiky  rays ; and  his  more  usual  practice  is 
to  keep  all  near  the  sun  in  one  simple  blaze  of  intense 
light,  and  from  the  first  clouds  to  throw  beams  to  the 
zenith,  though  he  often  does  not  permit  any  appearance 
of  rays  until  close  to  the  zenith  itself.  Open  at  the 
80th  page  of  the  Illustrated  edition  of  Rogers’s  poems. 
You  have  there  a sky  blazing  with  sunbeams ; but  they 
all  begin  a long  way  from  the  sun,  and  they  are  ac- 
counted for  by  a mass  of  dense  clouds  surrounding  the 
orb  itself.  Turn  to  the  7th  page.  Behind  the  old  oak, 
where  the  sun  is  supposed  to  be,  you  have  only  a blaze 
of  undistinguished  light ; but  up  on  the  left,  over  the 
edge  of  the  cloud,  on  its  dark  side,  the  sunbeam.  Turn 
to  page  192, — blazing  rays  again,  but  all  beginning 
where  the  clouds  do,  not  one  can  you  trace  to  the  sun ; 
and  observe  how  carefully  the  long  shadow  on  the  moun- 
tain is  accounted  for  by  the  dim  dark  promontory  pro- 
jecting out  near  the  sun.  I need  not  multiply  exam- 
ples; you  will  find  various  modifications  and  uses  of 


326 


OF  THE  OPEN  SKY. 


these  effects  throughout  his  works.  But  you  will  not 
find  a single  trace  of  them  in  the  old  masters.  They  give 
§ is.  The  total  you  the  rays  issuing  from  behind  black 
evidence  of  sm*  clouds,  and  because  they  are  a coarse  and 
wo^ksofthe  Sd  common  effect  which  could  not  possibly 
masters.  escape  their  observation,  and  because  they 

are  easily  imitated.  They  give  you  the  spiky  shafts 
issuing  from  the  orb  itself,  because  these  are  partially 
symbolical  of  light,  and  assist  a tardy  imagination,  as 
two  or  three  rays  scratched  round  the  sun  with  a pen 
would,  though  they  would  be  rays  of  darkness  instead  of 
light.*  But  of  the  most  beautiful  phenomenon  of  all, 
the  appearance  of  the  delicate  ray  far  in  the  sky,  thread- 
ing its  way  among  the  thin,  transparent  clouds,  while 
all  around  the  sun  is  unshadowed  fire,  there  is  no  record 
nor  example  whatsoever  in  their  works.  It  was  too 
delicate  and  spiritual  for  them ; probably  their  blunt 
and  feelingless  eyes  never  perceived  it  in  nature,  and 
their  untaught  imaginations  wrere  not  likely  to  originate 
it  in  the  study. 

Little  is  to  be  said  of  the  skies  of  our  other  landscape 
artists.  In  paintings,  they  are  commonly  toneless, 

* I have  left  this  passage  as  it  stood  originally,  because  it  is  right  as 
far  as  it  goes  ; yet  it  speaks  with  too  little  respect  of  symbolism, 
which  is  often  of  the  highest  use  in  religious  art,  and  in  some  meas- 
ure is  allowable  in  all  art.  In  the  works  of  almost  all  the  greatest 
masters  there  are  portions  which  are  explanatory  rather  than  repre- 
sentative, and  typical  rather  than  imitative  ; nor  could  these  be  parted 
with  but  at  infinite  loss.  Note,  with  respect  to  the  present  question, 
the  daring  black  sunbeams  of  Titian,  in  his  woodcut  of  St.  Francis 
receiving  the  stigmata,  and  compare  here  Part  III.  Sect.  II.  Chap.  IV. 
8 18  ; Chap.  V.  § 18.  And  though  I believe  that  I am  right  in  con- 
sidering all  such  symbolism  as  out  of  place  in  pure  landscape,  and  in 
attributing  that  of  Claude  to  ignorance  or  inability,  and  not  to  feeling, 
yet  I praise  Turner  not  so  much  for  his  absolute  refusal  to  represent 
the  spiky  ray  about  the  sun,  as  for  his  perceiving  and  rendering  that 
which  Claude  never  perceived,  the  multitudinous  presence  of  radiat- 
ing light  in  the  upper  sky,  and  on  all  its  countless  ranks  of  subtile 
cloud. 


OF  THE  OPEN  SKY. 


327 


§ 19.  Truth  of  the 
skies  of  modern 
drawings. 


crude,  and  wanting  in  depth  and  transparency ; but  in 
drawings,  some  very  perfect  and  delicate  examples  have 
been  produced  by  various  members  of  the 
old  Water  Color  Society,  and  one  or  two 
others ; but  with  respect  to  the  qualities  of 
which  we  are  at  present  speaking,  it  is  not  right  to  com- 
pare drawings  with  paintings,  as  the  wash  or  sponging, 
or  other  artifices  peculiar  to  water  color,  are  capable  of 
producing  an  appearance  of  quality  which  it  needs 
much  higher  art  to  produce  in  oils. 

Taken  generally,  the  open  skies  of  the  moderns  are  in- 
ferior in  quality  to  picked  and  untouched  skies  of  the 
greatest  of  the  ancients,  but  far' superior  to 
the  average  class  of  pictures  which  we  have 
every  day  fathered  upon  their  reputation. 

Nine  or  ten  skies  of  Claude  might  be 
named  which  are  not  to  be  contended  with, 
in  their  way,  and  as  many  of  Cuyp.  Teniers  has  given 
some  very  wonderful  passages,  and  the  clearness  of  the 
early  Italian  and  Dutch  schools  is  beyond  all  imitation. 
But  the  common  blue  daubing  which  we  hear  every  day 
in  our  best  galleries  attributed  to  Claude  and  Cuyp,  and 
the  genuine  skies  of  Salvator,  and  of  both  the  Poussins, 
are  not  to  be  compared  for  an  instant  with  the  best  works 
of  modern  times,  even  in  quality  and  transparency ; 
while  in  all  matters  requiring  delicate  observation  or 
accurate  science, — in  all  which  was  not  attainable  by 
technicalities  of  art,  and  which  depended  upon  the 
artist’s  knowledge  and  understanding  of  nature,  all  the 
works  of  the  ancients  are  alike  the  productions  of  mere 
children,  sometimes  manifesting  great  sensibility,  but 
proving  at  the  same  time,  feebly  developed  intelligence 
and  ill-regulated  observation. 


§ 20.  Recapitu- 
lation. The  best 
skies  of  the  an- 
cients are,  in 
quality,  i n i m i t- 
able,  but  in  ren- 
dering of  various 
truth,  childish. 


CHAPTEE  II. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS:  — FIRST,  OF  THE  KEGION  OF  THE 

CIERUS. 

Our  next  subject  of  investigation  must  be  the  specific 
character  of  clouds,  a species  of  truth  which  is  especially 
neglected  by  artists ; first,  because  as  it  is  within  the  lim- 
§ 1.  Difficulty  of  its  of  possibility  that  a cloud  may  assume 

ft  S C 6 r t ft  1 D 1 II  Cf  ^ 47 

wherein  the  truth  almost  any  form,  it  is  difficult  to  point  out, 
and  not  always  easy  to  feel,  wherein  error 
consists ; and  secondly,  because  it  is  totally  impossible 
to  study  the  forms  of  clouds  from  nature  with  care  and 
accuracy,  as  a change  in  the  subject  takes  place  between 
every  touch  of  the  following  pencil,  and  parts  of  an  out- 
line sketched  at  different  instants  cannot  harmonize, 
nature  never  having  intended  them  to  come  together. 
Still  if  artists  were  more  in  the  habit  of  sketching 
clouds  rapidly,  and  as  accurately  as  possible  in  the  out- 
line, from  nature,  instead  of  daubing  down  what  they 
call  “ effects  ” with  the  brush,  they  would  soon  find  there 
is  more  beauty  about  their  forms  than  can  be  arrived  at 
by  any  random  felicity  of  invention,  however  brilliant, 
and  more  essential  character  than  can  be  violated  with- 
out incurring  the  charge  of  falsehood, — falsehood  as 
direct  and  definite,  though  not  as  traceable  as  error  in 
the  less  varied  features  of  organic  form. 

The  first  and  most  important  character  of  clouds,  is 
dependent  on  the  different  altitudes  at  which  they  are 
formed.  The  atmosphere  may  be  conveniently  con- 
sidered as  divided  into  three  spaces,  each  inhabited  by 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS . 


329 


§ 2.  Ya  r i a t i o n 
of  their  character 
at  different  eleva- 
tions. The  three 
regions  to  which 
they  may  conven- 
iently he  consid- 
ered a s belong- 
ing. 


clouds  of  specific  character  altogether  different,  though, 
in  reality,  there  is  no  distinct  limit  fixed  between  them 
by  nature,  clouds  being  formed  at  every 
altitude,  and  partaking  according  to  their 
altitude,  more  or  less  of  the  characters  of 
the  upper  or  lower  regions.  The  scenery 
of  the  sky  is  thus  formed  of  an  infinitely 
graduated  series  of  systematic  forms  of 
cloud,  each  of  which  has  its  own  region  in  which  alone 
it  is  formed,  and  each  of  which  has  specific  characters 
which  can  only  be  properly  determined  by  comparing 
them  as  they  are  found  clearly  distinguished  by  intervals 
of  considerable  space.  I shall  therefore  consider  the 
sky  as  divided  into  three  regions — the  upper  region,  or 
region  of  the  cirrus ; the  central  region,  or  region  of  the 
stratus;  the  lower  region,  or  the  region  of  the  rain- 
cloud. 

The  clouds  which  I wish  to  consider  as  included  in  the 
upper  region,  never  touch  even  the  highest  mountains 
of  Europe,  and  may  therefore  be  looked 
upon  as  never  formed  below  an  elevation 
of  at  least  15,000  feet ; they  are  the  motionless  multitu- 
dinous lines  of  delicate  vapor  with  which  the  blue  of  the 
open  sky  is  commonly  streaked  or  speckled  after  several 
days  of  fine  weather.  I must  be  pardoned  for  giving  a 
detailed  description  of  their  specific  characters  as  they 
are  of  constant  occurrence  in  the  works  of  modern 
artists,  and  I shall  have  occasion  to  speak  frequently  of 
them  in  future  parts  of  the  work.  Their  chief  characters 
are — first,  Symmetry:  They  are  nearly 

, -a  • i . . -|  • § 4.  The  symraet- 

always  arranged  m some  definite  and  evi-  ricai  arrangement 
-j  i -i  i 1 of  its  clouds. 

dent  order,  commonly  m long  ranks  reach- 
ing sometimes  from  the  zenith  to  the  horizon,  each  rank 
composed  of  an  infinite  number  of  transverse  bars  of 
about  the  same  length,  each  bar  thickest  in  the  mid- 
dle, and  terminating  in  a traceless  vaporous  point  at 


§ 3.  Extent  of  the 
upper  region. 


830 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


each  side;  the  ranks  are  in  the  direction  of  the  wind, 
and  the  bars  of  course  at  right  angles  to  it ; these  latter 
are  commonly  slightly  bent  in  the  middle.  Frequently 
two  systems  of  this  kind,  indicative  of  two  currents  of 
wind,  at  different  altitudes  intersect  one  another,  form- 
ing a network.  Another  frequent  arrangement  is  in 
groups  of  excessively  fine,  silky,  parallel  fibres,  com- 
monly radiating,  or  having  a tendency  to  radiate,  from 
one  of  their  extremities,  and  terminating  in  a plumy 
sweep  at  the  other : — these  are  vulgarly  known  as 
“ mares’  tails.”  The  plumy  and  expanded  extremity  of 
these  is  often  bent  upwards,  sometimes  back  and  up 
again,  giving  an  appearance  of  great  flexibility  and 
unity  at  the  same  time,  as  if  the  clouds  were  tough,  and 
would  hold  together  however  bent.  The  narrow  extrem- 
ity is  invariably  turned  to  the  wind,  and  the  fibres  are 
parallel  with  its  direction.  The  upper  clouds  always 
fall  into  some  modification  of  one  or  other  of  these 
arrangements.  They  thus  differ  from  all  other  clouds, 
in  having  a plan  and  system ; whereas  other  clouds, 
though  there  are  certain  laws  which  they  cannot  break, 
have  yet  perfect  freedom  from  anything  like  a relative 
and  general  system  of  government.  The  upper  clouds 
are  to  the  lower,  what  soldiers  on  parade  are  to  a mixed 
multitude ; no  men  walk  on  their  heads  or  their  hands, 
and  so  there  are  certain  laws  which  no  clouds  violate ; 
but  there  is  nothing  except  in  the  upper  clouds  resem- 
bling symmetrical  discipline. 

Secondly,  Sharpness  of  Edge : The  edges  of  the  bars 
of  the  upper  clouds  which  are  turned  to  the  wind,  are 
§ 5.  Their  exceed-  often  the  sharpest  which  the  sky  shows ; 
mg  delicacy.  no  ou^jne  whatever  of  any  other  kind  of 

cloud,  however  marked  and  energetic,  ever  approaches 
the  delicate  decision  of  these  edges.  The  outline  of  a 
black  thunder-cloud  is  striking,  from  the  great  energy 
of  the  color  or  shade  of  the  general  mass ; but  as  a line, 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS . 


331 


it -is  soft  and  indistinct,  compared  with  the  edge  of  the 
cirrus,  in  a clear  sky  with  a brisk  breeze.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  edge  of  the  bar  turned  away  from  the  wind  is 
always  soft,  often  imperceptible,  melting  into  the  blue 
interstice  between  it  and  its  next  neighbor.  Commonly 
the  sharper  one  edge  is,  the  softer  is  the  other,  and  the 
clouds  look  flat,  and  as  if  they  slipped  over  each  other 
like  the  scales  of  a fish.  When  both  edges  are  soft,  as  is 
always  the  case  when  the  sky  is  clear  and  windless,  the 
cloud  looks  solid,  round,  and  fleecy. 

Thirdly,  Multitude : The  delicacy  of  these  vapors  is 
sometimes  carried  into  such  an  infinity  of  division,  that 
no  other  sensation  of  number  that  the  § 6.  Their  num- 
earth  or  heaven  can  give  is  so  impressive.  ber‘ 

Number  is  always  most  felt  when  it  is  symmetrical,  (vide 
Burke  on  “ Sublime,”  Part  ii.  sect.  8,)  and,  therefore,  no 
sea-waves  nor  fresh  leaves  make  their  number  so  evident 
or  so  impressive  as  these  vapors.  Nor  is  nature  content 
with  an  infinity  of  bars  or  lines  alone — each  bar  is  in  its 
turn  severed  into  a number  of  small  undulatory  masses, 
more  or  less  connected  according  to  the  violence  of  the 
wind.  When  this  division  is  merely  effected  by  undula- 
tion, the  cloud  exactly  resembles  sea-sand  ribbed  by  the 
tide ; but  when  the  division  amounts  to  real  separation 
we  have  the  mottled  or  mackerel  skies.  Commonly,  the 
greater  the  division  of  its  bars,  the  broader  and  more 
shapeless  is  the  rank  or  field,  so  that  in  the  mottled  sky 
it  is  lost  altogether,  and  we  have  large  irregular  fields 
of  equal  size,  masses  like  flocks  of  sheep ; such  clouds  are 
three  or  four  thousand  feet  below  the  legitimate  cirrus. 
I have  seen  them  cast  a shadow  on  the  Mont  Blanc  at 
sunset,  so  that  they  must  descend  nearly  to  within  fifteen 
thousand  feet  of  the  earth. 

Fourthly,  Purity  of  Color : The  nearest  of  these  clouds 
— those  over  the  observer’s  head,  being  at  least  three 
miles  above  him,  and  nearly  all  entering  the  ordinary 


332 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


sphere  of  vision,  farther  from  him  still, — their  dark  sides 
are  much  grayer  and  cooler  than  those  of  other  clouds, 
, owing  to  their  distance.  They  are  com- 

§ 7.  Causes  of  ? , J 

their  peculiarly  posed  oi  the  purest  aqueous  vapor,  free 

delicate  coloring.  \ ^ 

from  ail  foulness  of  earthy  gases,  and  oi 
this  in  the  lightest  and  most  ethereal  state  in  which  it 
can  be,  to  be  visible.  Farther,  they  receive  the  light  of 
the  sun  in  a state  of  far  greater  intensity  than  lower  ob- 
jects, the  beams  being  transmitted  to  them  through  at- 
mospheric air  far  less  dense,  and  wholly  unaffected  by 
mist,  smoke,  or  any  other  impurity.  Hence  their  colors 
are  more  pure  and  vivid,  and  their  white  less  sullied 
than  those  of  any  other  clouds. 

Lastly,  Yariety : Variety  is  never  so  conspicuous,  as 
when  it  is  united  with  symmetry.  The  perpetual  change 
§8.  Their  variety  of  form  in  other  clouds,  is  monotonous 
of  form.  *n  very  dissimilarity,  nor  is  difference 

striking  where  no  connection  is  implied ; but  if  through 
a range  of  barred  clouds,  crossing  half  the  heaven,  all 
governed  by  the  same  forces  and  falling  into  one  general 
form,  there  be  yet  a marked  and  evident  dissimilarity 
between  each  member  of  the  great  mass — one  more  finely 
drawn,  the  next  more  delicately  moulded,  the  next  more 
gracefully  bent — each  broken  into  differently  modelled 
and  variously  numbered  groups,  the  variety  is  doubly 
striking,  because  contrasted  with  the  perfect  symmetry 
of  which  it  forms  a part.  Hence,  the  importance  of  the 
truth,  that  nature  never  lets  one  of  the  members  of  even 
her  most  disciplined  groups  of  cloud  be  like  another ; 
but  though  each  is  adapted  for  the  same  function,  and 
in  its  great  features  resembles  all  the  others,  not  one, 
out  of  the  millions  with  which  the  sky  is  checkered,  is 
without  a separate  beauty  and  character,  appearing  to 
have  had  distinct  thought  occupied  in  its  conception, 
and  distinct  forces  in  its  production  ; and  in  addition  to 
this  perpetual  invention,  visible  in  each  member  of  each 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


333 


system,  we  find  systems  of  separate  cloud  intersecting 
one  another,  the  sweeping  lines  mingled  and  interwoven 
with  the  rigid  bars,  these  in  their  turn  melting  into 
banks  of  sand-like  ripple  and  flakes  of  drifted  and  irreg- 
ular foam ; under  all,  perhaps  the  massy  outline  of  some 
lower  cloud  moves  heavily  across  the  motionless  buoy- 
ancy of  the  upper  lines,  and  indicates  at  once  their  ele- 
vation and  their  repose. 

Such  are  the  great  attributes  of  the  upper  cloud  region ; 

whether  they  are  beautiful,  valuable,  or  impressive,  it  is 

not  our  present  business  to  decide,  nor  to  „ m t , , 

endeavor  to  discover  the  reason  of  the 

somewhat  remarkable  fact,  that  the  whole  representation,  m 
..  -ill  i nn  -i  ancient  landscape. 

held  oi  ancient  landscape  art  affords,  as  iar 
as  we  remember,  but  one  instance  of  any  effort  whatever 
to  represent  the  character  of  this  cloud  region.  That 
one  instance  is  the  landscape  of  Rubens  in  our  own 
gallery,  in  which  the  mottled  or  fleecy  sky  is  given  with 
perfect  truth  and  exquisite  beauty.  To  this  should  per- 
haps be  added,  some  of  the  backgrounds  of  the  histori- 
cal painters,  where  horizontal  lines  were  required,  and  a 
few  level  bars  of  white  or  warm  color  cross  the  serenity 
of  the  blue.  These,  as  far  as  they  go,  are  often  very 
perfect,  and  the  elevation  and  repose  of  their  effect 
might,  we  should  have  thought,  have  pointed  out  to  the 
landscape  painters  that  there  was  something  (I  do  not  say 
much,  but  certainly  something)  to  be  made  out  of  the 
high  clouds.  Not  one  of  them,  however,  took  the  hint. 
To  whom,  among  them  all,  can  we  look  for  the  slightest 
realization  of  the  fine  and  faithful  descriptive  passage  of 
the  “ Excursion,”  already  alluded  to  : — 

“ But  rays  of  light, 

Now  suddenly  diverging  from  the  orb, 

Retired  behind  the  mountain  tops,  or  veiled 
By  the  dense  air,  shot  upwards  to  the  crown 
Of  the  blue  firmament — aloft — and  wide  : 


334 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


And  multitudes  of  little  floating  clouds, 

Ere  we,  who  saw,  of  change  were  conscious,  pierced 
Through  their  ethereal  texture,  had  become 
Vivid  as  fire, — Clouds  separately  poised, 

Innumerable  multitude  of  forms 
Scattered  through  half  the  circle  of  the  sky  ; 

And  giving  back,  and  shedding  each  on  each. 

With  prodigal  communion,  the  bright  hues 
Which  from  the  unapparent  fount  of  glory 
They  had  imbibed,  and  ceased  not  to  receive. 

That  which  the  heavens  displayed  the  liquid  deep 
Repeated,  but  with  unity  sublime.  ” 

There  is  but  one  master  whose  works  we  can  think  of 
while  we  read  this ; one  alone  has  taken  notice  of  the 
§10.  The  intense  neglected  upper  sky;  it  is  his  peculiar 
study  of  them  by  and  favorite  field ; he  has  watched  its  every 
Turner.  modification,  and  given  its  every  phase  and 

feature ; at  all  hours,  in  all  seasons,  he  has  followed  its 
passions  and  its  changes,  and  has  brought  down  and 
laid  open  to  the  world  another  apocalypse  of  heaven. 

There  is  scarcely  a painting  of  Turner’s,  in  which  se- 
renity of  sky  and  intensity  of  light  are  aimed  at  together, 
in  which  these  clouds  are  not  used,  though  there  are  not 
two  cases  in  which  they  are  used  altogether  alike.  Some- 
times they  are  crowded  together  in  masses  of  mingling 
light,  as  in  the  Shylock;  every  part  and  atom  sympa- 
thizing in  that  continuous  expression  of  slow  movement 
which  Shelley  has  so  beautifully  touched : — 

“ Underneath  the  young  gray  dawn 
A multitude  of  dense,  white  fleecy  clouds, 

Were  wandering  in  thick  flocks  along  the  mountains, 
Shepherded  by  the  slow,  unwilling  icind.” 

At  other  times  they  are  blended  with  the  sky  itself, 
felt  only  here  and  there  by  a ray  of  light  calling  them 
into  existence  out  of  its  misty  shade,  as  in  the  Mercury 
and  Argus ; sometimes,  where  great  repose  is  to  be  given, 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


335 


they  appear  in  a few  detached,  equal,  rounded  flakes, 
which  seem  to  hang  motionless,  each  like  the  shadow  of 
the  other,  in  the  deep  blue  of  the  zenith,  as  in  the  Acro- 
Corinth;  sometimes  they  are  scattered  in  fiery  hying 
fragments,  each  burning  with  separate  energy,  as  in  the 
Temeraire ; sometimes  woven  together  with  fine  threads 
of  intermediate  darkness,  melting  into  the  blue  as  in  the 
Napoleon.  But  in  all  cases  the  exquisite  manipulation 
of  the  master  gives  to  each  atom  of  the  multitude  its  own 
character  and  expression.  Though  they  be  countless  as 
leaves,  each  has  its  portion  of  light,  its  shadow,  its  re- 
flex, its  peculiar  and  separating  form. 

Take  for  instance  the  illustrated  edition  of  Bogers’s 
Poems,*  and  open  it  at  the  80th  page,  and  observe 
how  every  attribute  which  I have  pointed 
out  in  the  upper  sky,  is  there  rendered  ette’  sunrise  Son 
with  the  faithfulness  of  a mirror ; the  long 
lines  of  parallel  bars,  the  delicate  curvature  from  the 
wind,  which  the  inclination  of  the  sail  shows  you  to  be 
from  the  west ; the  excessive  sharpness  of  every  edge 
which  is  turned  to  the  wind,  the  faintness  of  every  op- 
posite one,  the  breaking  up  of  each  bar  into  rounded 
masses,  and  finally,  the  inconceivable  variety  with  which 
individual  form  has  been  given  to  every  member  of  the 
multitude,  and  not  only  individual  form,  but  roundness 
and  substance  even  where  there  is  scarcely  a hairbreadth 
of  cloud  to  express  it  in.  Observe,  above  everything, 
the  varying  indication  of  space  and  depth  in  the  whole, 
so  that  you  may  look  through  and  through  from  one 
cloud  to  another,  feeling  not  merely  how  they  retire  to 
the  horizon,  but  how  they  melt  back  into  the  recesses 

* I use  this  work  frequently  for  illustration,  because  it  is  the  only 
one  I know  in  which  the  engraver  has  worked  with  delicacy  enough 
to  give  the  real  forms  and  touches  of  Turner.  I can  reason  from  these 
plates,  (in  questions  of  form  only,)  nearly  as  well  as  I could  from  the 
drawings. 


336 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


of  the  sky ; every  interval  being  filled  with  absolute  air, 
and  all  its  spaces  so  melting  and  fluctuating,  and  fraught 
with  change  as  with  repose,  that  as  you  look,  you  will 
fancy  that  the  rays  shoot  higher  and  higher  into  the 
vault  of  light,  and  that  the  pale  streak  of  horizontal 
vapor  is  melting  away  from  the  cloud  that  it  crosses. 
Now  watch  for  the  next  barred  sunrise,  and  take  this 
vignette  to  the  window,  and  test  it  by  nature’s  own 
clouds,  among  which  you  will  find  forms  and  passages,  I 
do  not  say  merely  like , but  apparently  the  actual  origi- 
nals of  parts  of  this  very  drawing.  And  with  whom  will 
you  do  this,  except  with  Turner  ? Will  you  do  it  with 
Claude,  and  set  that  blank  square  yard  of  blue,  with  its 
round,  white,  flat  fixtures  of  similar  cloud,  beside  the 
purple  infinity  of  nature,  with  her  countless  multitude 
of  shadowy  lines,  and  flaky  waves,  and  folded  veils  of 
variable  mist?  Will  you  do  it  with  Poussin,  and  set 
those  massy  steps  of  unyielding  solidity,  with  the  char- 
iot-and-four  driving  up  them,  by  the  side  of  the  delicate 
forms  which  terminate  in  threads  too  fine  for  the  eye  to 
follow  them,  and  of  texture  so  thin  woven  that  the  earli- 
est stars  shine  through  them  ? Will  you  do  it  with  Sal- 
vator, and  set  that  volume  of  violent  and  restless  manu- 
factory smoke  beside  those  calm  and  quiet  bars,  which 
pause  in  the  heaven  as  if  they  would  never  leave  it 
more  ? 

Now  we  have  just  seen  how  Turner  uses  the  sharp-edged 
cirri  when  he  aims  at  giving  great  transparency  of  air. 

12  h'  use  of  ^ was  s^lown  the  Preceding  chapter 

the  ’ cirrus  in  ex-  that  sunbeams,  or  the  appearance  of  them, 
pressing  mist.  , , 

are  always  sharper  m their  edge  m propor- 
tion as  the  air  is  more  misty,  as  they  are  most  defined  in 
a room  where  there  is  most  dust  flying  about  in  it.  Con- 
sequently, in  the  vignette  we  have  been  just  noticing, 
where  transparency  is  to  be  given,  though  there  is  a 
blaze  of  light,  its  beams  are  never  edged ; a tendency  to 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


337 


rays  is  visible,  but  yon  cannot  in  any  part  find  a single 
marked  edge  of  a rising  sunbeam,  the  sky  is  merely 
more  Hushed  in  one  place  than  another.  Now  let  us  see 
what  Turner  does  when  he  wants  mist.  Turn  to  the 
Alps  at  Daybreak,  page  193,  in  the  same  book.  Here 
we  have  the  cirri  used  again,  but  now  they  have  no  sharp 
edges,  they  are  all  fleecy  and  mingling  with  each  other, 
'though  every  one  of  them  has  the  most  exquisite  indi- 
cation of  individual  form,  and  thej^  melt  back,  not  till 
they  are  lost  in  exceeding  light,  as  in  the  other  plate, 
but  into  a mysterious,  fluctuating,  shadowy  sky,  of  which, 
though  the  light  penetrates  through  it  all,  you  perceive 
every  part  to  be  charged  with  vapor.  Notice  particu- 
larly the  half -indicated  forms  even  where  it  is  most  se- 
rene, behind  the  snowy  mountains.  And  now,  how  are 
the  sunbeams  drawn?  no  longer  indecisive,  flushing, 
palpitating,  every  one  is  sharp  and  clear,  and  terminated 
by  definite  shadow ; note  especially  the  marked  lines  on 
the  upper  cloud ; finally,  observe  the  difference  in  the 
mode  of  indicating  the  figures,  which  are  here  misty  and 
indistinguishable,  telling  only  as  shadows,  though  they 
are  near  and  large,  while  those  in  the  former  vignette 
came  clear  upon  the  eye,  though  they  were  so  far  off  as 
to  appear  mere  points. 

Now  is  this  perpetual  consistency  in  all  points,  this 
concentration  of  every  fact  which  can  possibly  bear  upon 
what  we  are  to  be  told,  this  watchfulness  § ^ H.g  conc.gt 
of  the  entire  meaning  and  system  of  nat-  encyin  everyini- 

, , » nor  feature. 

ure,  which  fills  every  part  and  space  ot 
the  picture  with  coincidences  of  witness,  which  come  out 
upon  us,  as  they  would  from  the  reality,  more  fully  and 
deeply  in  proportion  to  the  knowledge  we  possess  and 
the  attention  we  give,  admirable  or  not  ? I could  go  on 
writing  page  after  page  on  every  sky  of  Turner’s,  and 
pointing  out  fresh  truths  in  every  one.  In  the  Havre, 
for  instance,  of  the  Rivers  of  France  we  have  a new  fact 
22 


338 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


pointed  out  to  us  with  respect  to  these  cirri,  namely, 
their  being  so  faint  and  transparent  as  not  to  be  distin- 
guishable from  the  blue  of  the  sky,  (a  frequent  case.) 
except  in  the  course  of  a sunbeam,  which,  however,  does 
not  illumine  their  edges,  they  being  not  solid  enough  to 
reflect  light,  but  penetrates  their  whole  substance,  and 
renders  them  flat,  luminous  forms  in  its  path,  instantly 
and  totally  lost  at  its  edge.  And  thus  a separate  essay 
would  be  required  by  every  picture,  to  make  fully  under- 
stood the  new  phenomena  which  it  treated  and  illus- 
trated. But  after  once  showing  what  are  the  prevailing 
characteristics  of  these  clouds,  we  can  only  leave  it  to 
the  reader  to  trace  them  wherever  they  occur.  There 
are  some  fine  and  characteristic  passages  of  this  kind  of 
cloud  given  by  Stanfield,  though  he  dares  not  use  them 
in  multitude,  and  is  wanting  in  those  refined  qualities 
of  form  which  it  is  totally  impossible  to  explain  in 
words,  but  which,  perhaps,  by  simple  outlines  on  a large 
scale,  selected  from  the  cloud  forms  of  various  artists,  I 
may  in  following  portions  of  the  work  illustrate  with  the 
pencil. 

Of  the  colors  of  these  clouds  I have  spoken  before, 
(Sec.  I.  Chap.  II. ;)  but  though  I then  alluded  to  their 
§ 14.  The  color  of  Purity  and  vividness,  I scarcely  took  prop- 
the  upper  clouds.  er  notice  of  their  variety ; there  is  indeed 
in  nature  variety  in  all  things,  and  it  would  be  absurd 
to  insist  on  it  in  each  case,  yet  the  colors  of  these  clouds 
are  so  marvellous  in  their  changefulness,  that  they  re- 
quire particular  notice.  If  you  watch  for  the  next  sun- 
set, when  there  are  a considerable  number  of  these  cirri 
in  the  sky,  you  will  see,  especially  at  the  zenith,  that  the 
sky  does  not  remain  of  the  same  color  for  two  inches  to- 
gether ; one  cloud  has  a dark  side  of  cold  blue,  and  a 
fringe  of  milky  white ; another,  above  it,  has  a dark  side 
of  purple  and  an  edge  of  red ; another,  nearer  the  sun, 
has  an  under-side  of  orange  and  an  edge  of  gold ; these 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS . 


339 


yon  will  find  mingled  with,  and  passing  into  the  blue  of 
the  sky,  which  in  places  yon  will  not  be  able  to  distin- 
guish from  the  cool  gray  of  the  darker  clouds,  and  which 
will  be  itself  full  of  gradation,  now  pure  and  deep,  now 
faint  and  feeble ; and  all  this  is  done,  not  in  large 
pieces,  nor  on  a large  scale,  but  over  and  oyer  again  in 
every  square  yard,  so  that  there  is  no  single  part  nor 
.portion  of  the  whole  sky  which  has  not  in  itself  variety 
of  color  enough  for  a separate  picture,  and  yet  no  sin- 
gle part  which  is  like  another,  or  which  has  not  some 
peculiar  source  of  beauty,  and  some  peculiar  arrange- 
ment of  color  of  its  own.  Now,  instead  of  this,  you 
get  in  the  old  masters — Cuyp,  or  Claude,  or  whoever 
they  may  be — a field  of  blue,  delicately,  beautifully,  and 
uniformly  shaded  down  to  the  yellow  sun,  with  a certain 
number  of  similar  clouds,  each  with  a dark  side  of  the 
same  gray,  and  an  edge  of  the  same  yellow.  I do  not 
say  that  nature  never  does  anything  like  this,  but  I say 
that  her  principle  is  to  do  a great  deal  more,  and  that 
what  she  does  more  than  this, — what  I have  above  de- 
scribed, and  what  you  may  see  in  nine  sunsets  out  of 
ten, — has  been  observed,  attempted,  and  rendered  by 
Turner  only,  and  by  him  with  a fidelity  and  force  which 
presents  us  with  more  essential  truth,  and  more  clear 
expression  and  illustration  of  natural  laws,  in  every 
wreath  of  vapor,  than  composed  the  whole  stock  of  heav- 
enly information,  which  lasted  Cuyp  and  Claude  their 
lives. 

We  close  then  our  present  consideration  of  the  upper 
clouds,  to  return  to  them  when  we  know  what  is  beauti- 
ful ; we  have  at  present  only  to  remember  g 15  Recapitula_ 
that  of  these  clouds,  and  the  truths  con-  tion* 
nected  with  them,  none  before  Turner  had  taken  any 
notice  whatsoever;  that  had  they  therefore  been  even 
feebly  and  imperfectly  represented  by  him,  they  would 
yet  have  given  him  a claim  to  be  considered  more  ex- 


340 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


tended  and  universal  in  his  statement  of  truths  than  any 
of  his  predecessors  ; how  much  more  when  we  find  that 
deep  fidelity  in  his  studied  and  perfect  skies  which 
opens  new  sources  of  delight  to  every  advancement  of 
our  knowledge,  and  to  every  added  moment  of  our  con- 
templation. 


CHAPTER  III. 


©F  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS: — SECONDLY,  OF  THE  CENTRAL  CLOUD 

REGION. 

We  have  next  to  investigate  the  character  of  the  Cen- 
tral Cloud  Region,  which  I consider  as  including  all 
clouds  which  are  the  usual  characteristic  of  ordinary  se- 
rene weather,  and  which  touch  and  envelop  § 1 Estent  and 
the  mountains  of  Switzerland,  but  never  W®*1  character 
affect  those  of  our  own  island ; they  may  cloud  region, 
therefore  be  considered  as  occupying  a space  of  air  ten 
thousand  feet  in  height,  extending  from  five  to  fifteen 
thousand  feet  above  the  sea. 

These  clouds,  according  to  their  elevation,  appear  with 
great  variety  of  form,  often  partaking  of  the  streaked  or 
mottled  character  of  the  higher  region,  and  as  often, 
when  the  precursors  of  storm,  manifesting  forms  closely 
connected  with  the  lowest  rain  clouds ; but  the  species 
especially  characteristic  of  the  central  region  is  a white, 
ragged,  irregular,  and  scattered  vapor,  which  has  little 
form  and  less  color,  and  of  which  a good  example  may  be 
seen  in  the  largest  landscape  of  Cuyp,  in  the  Dulwich 
Gallery.  When  this  vapor  collects  into  masses,  it  is 
partially  rounded,  clumsy,  and  ponderous,  as  if  it  would 
tumble  out  of  the  sky,  shaded  with  a dull  gray,  and  to- 
tally devoid  of  any  appearance  of  energy  or  motion. 
Even  in  nature,  these  clouds  are  comparatively  uninter- 
esting, scarcely  worth  raising  our  heads  to  look  at ; and 
on  canvas,  valuable  only  as  a means  of  introducing  light, 
and  breaking  the  monotony  of  blue ; yet  they  are,  per- 


342 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS . 


§ 2.  Its  character- 
istic clouds,  re- 
quiring no  atten- 
tion nor  thought 
for  their  represen- 
tation, are  there- 
fore favorite  sub- 
jects with  the  old 
masters. 


haps,  beyond  all  others  the  favorite  clouds  of  the  Dutch 
masters.  Whether  they  had  any  motive  for  the  adop- 
tion of  such  materials,  beyond  the  extreme 
facility  with  which  acres  of  canvas  might 
thus  be  covered  without  any  troublesome 
exertion  of  thought ; or  any  temptation  to 
such  selections  beyond  the  impossibility 
of  error  where  nature  shows  no  form,  and 
the  impossibility  of  deficiency  where  she  shows  no 
beauty,  it  is  not  here  the  place  to  determine.  Such  sides 
are  happily  beyond  the  reach  of  criticism,  for  he  who 
tells  you  nothing  cannot  tell  you  a falsehood.  A little 
hake -white,  glazed  with  a light  brush  over  the  carefully 
toned  blue,  permitted  to  fall  into  whatever  forms  chance 
might  determine,  with  the  single  precaution  that  their 
edges  should  be  tolerably  irregular,  supplied,  in  hun- 
dreds of  instances,  a sky  quite  good  enough  for  all  ordi- 
nary purposes — quite  good  enough  for  cattle  to  graze,  or 
boors  to  play  at  nine-pins — and  equally  devoid  of  all 
that  could  gratify,  inform,  or  offend. 

But  although  this  kind  of  cloud  is,  as  I have  said,  typ- 
ical of  the  central  region,  it  is  not  one  which  nature  is 

3 The  clouds  She  scarcely  ever  lets  an  hour 

of  Salvator  and  pass  without  some  manifestation  of  finer 
forms,  sometimes  approaching  the  upper 
cirri,  sometimes  the  lower  cumulus.  And  then  in  the 
lower  outlines,  we  have  the  nearest  approximation  which 
nature  ever  presents  to  the  clouds  of  Claude,  Salvator, 
and  Poussin,  to  the  characters  of  which  I must  request 
especial  attention,  as  it  is  here  only  that  we  shall  have  a 
fair  opportunity  of  comparing  their  skies  with  those  of 
the  modem  school.  I shall,  as  before,  glance  rapidly  at 
the  great  laws  of  specific  form,  and  so  put  it  in  the  power 
of  the  reader  to  judge  for  himself  of  the  truth  of  repre- 
sentation. 

Clouds,  it  is  to  be  remembered,  are  not  so  much  local 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


343 


vapor,  as  vapor  rendered  locally  visible  by  a fall  of  tem- 
perature. Thus  a cloud,  whose  parts  are  in  constant 
motion,  will  hover  on  a snowy  mountain,  g 4 Their  essen_ 
pursuing  constantly  the  same  track  upon  tial  characters, 
its  flanks,  and  yet  remaining  of  the  same  size,  the  same 
form,  and  in  the  same  place,  for  half  a day  together.  No 
matter  how  violent  or  how  capricious  the  wind  may  be, 
' the  instant  it  approaches  the  spot  where  the  chilly  influ- 
ence of  the  snow  extends,  the  moisture  it  carries  becomes 
visible,  and  then  and  there  the  cloud  forms  on  the  in- 
stant, apparently  maintaining  its  form  against  the  wind, 
though  the  careful  and  keen  eye  can  see  all  its  parts  in 
the  most  rapid  motion  across  the  mountain.  The  out- 
lines of  such  a cloud  are  of  course  not  determined  by 
the  irregular  impulses  of  the  wind,  but  by  the  fixed  lines 
of  radiant  heat  which  regulate  the  temperature  of  the 
atmosphere  of  the  mountain.  It  is  terminated,  therefore, 
not  by  changing  curves,  but  by  steady  right  lines  of  more 
or  less  decision,  often  exactly  correspondent  with  the 
outline  of  the  mountain  on  which  it  is  formed,  and  falling 
therefore  into  grotesque  peaks  and  precipices.  I have 
seen  the  marked  and  angular  outline  of  the  Grandes 
Jorasses,  at  Chamounix,  mimicked  in  its  every  jag  by 
a line  of  clouds  above  it.  Another  resultant  phenom- 
enon is  the  formation  of  cloud  in  the  calm  air  to  leeward 
of  a steep  summit ; cloud  whose  edges  are  in  rapid  mo- 
tion, where  they  are  affected  by  the  current  of  the  wind 
above,  and  stream  from  the  peak  like  the  smoke  of  a vol- 
cano, yet  always  vanish  at  a certain  distance  from  it  as 
steam  issuing  from  a chimney.  When  wet  weather  of 
some  duration  is  approaching,  a small  white  spot  of  cloud 
will  sometimes  appear  low  on  the  hill  flanks ; it  will  not 
move,  but  will  increase  gradually  for  some  little  time, 
then  diminish,  still  without  moving;  disappear  alto- 
gether, reappear  ten  minutes  afterwards,  exactly  in  the 
same  spot ; increase  to  a greater  extent  than  before,  again 


344 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


disappear,  again  return,  and  at  last  permanently ; other 
similar  spots  of  cloud  forming  simultaneously,  with 
various  fluctuations,  each  in  its  own  spot,  and  at  the 
same  level  on  the  hill-side,  until  all  expand,  join  to- 
gether, and  form  an  unbroken  veil  of  threatening  gray, 
which  darkens  gradually  into  storm.  What  in  such  cases 
takes  place  palpably  and  remarkably,  is  more  or  less  a 
law  of  formation  in  all  clouds  whatsoever ; they  being 
bounded  rather  by  lines  expressive  of  changes  of  tem- 
perature in  the  atmosphere,  than  by  the  impulses  of  the 
currents  of  wind  in  which  those  changes  take  place. 
Even  when  in  rapid  and  visible  motion  across  the  sky, 
the  variations  which  take  place  in  their  outlines  are  not 
so  much  alterations  of  position  and  arrangement  of  parts, 
as  they  are  the  alternate  formation  and  disappearance  of 
parts.  There  is,  therefore,  usually  a parallelism  and  con- 
sistency in  their  great  outlines,  which  give  system  to 
the  smaller  curves  of  which  they  are  composed ; and  if 
these  great  lines  be  taken,  rejecting  the  minutiae  of  vari- 
ation, the  resultant  form  will  almost  always  be  angular, 
§ 5.  Their  angn-  an^  full  character  and  decision.  In  the 
erahrScis?ongeof  hock-like  fields  of  equal  masses,  each  indi- 
outune.  vidual  mass  has  the  effect,  not  of  an  ellipse 

or  circle,  but  of  a rhomboid;  the  sky  is  crossed  and 
checkered,  not  honeycombed ; in  the  lower  cumuli,  even 
though  the  most  rounded  of  all  clouds,  the  groups  are 
not  like  balloons  or  bubbles,  but  like  towers  or  moun- 
tains. And  the  result  of  this  arrangement  in  masses 
more  or  less  angular,  varied  with,  and  chiefly  constructed 
of,  curves  of  the  utmost  freedom  and  beauty,  is  that 
appearance  of  exhaustless  and  fantastic  energy  which 
gives  every  cloud  a marked  character  of  its  own,  suggest- 
ing resemblances  to  the  specific  outlines  of  organic  ob- 
jects. I do  not  say  that  such  accidental  resemblances 
are  a character  to  be  imitated ; but  merely  that  they  bear 
witness  to  the  originality  and  vigor  of  separate  concep- 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


345 


tion  in  cloud  forms,  which  give  to  the  scenery  of  the  sky 
a force  and  variety  no  less  delightful  than  that  of  the 
changes  of  mountain  outline  in  a hill  district  of  great 
elevation ; and  that  there  is  added  to  this  a spirit-like 
feeling,  a capricious,  mocking  imagery  of  passion  and 
life,  totally  different  from  any  effects  of  inanimate  form 
that  the  earth  can  show. 

The  minor  contours,  out  of  which  the  larger  outlines 
are  composed,  are  indeed  beautifully  curvilinear;  but 
they  are  never  monotonous  in  their  curves. 

tp,.  . Tii  § 6.  The  compo- 

kirst  comes  a concave  line,  then  a convex  Bition  of  their 
one,  then  an  angular  jag,  breaking  off  into 
spray,  then  a downright  straight  line,  then  a curve  again, 
then  a deep  gap,  and  a place  where  all  is  lost  and  melted 
away,  and  so  on ; displaying  in  every  inch  of  the  form 
renewed  and  ceaseless  invention,  setting  off  grace  with 
rigidity,  and  relieving  flexibility  with  force,  in  a manner 
scarcely  less  admirable,  and  far  more  changeful  than 
even  in  the  muscular  forms  of  the  human  frame.  Nay, 
such  is  the  exquisite  composition  of  all  this,  that  you 
may  take  any  single  fragment  of  any  cloud  in  the  sky, 
and  you  will  find  it  put  together  as  if  there  had  been  a 
year’s  thought  over  the  plan  of  it,  arranged  with  the 
most  studied  inequality — with  the  most  delicate  symme- 
try— with  the  most  elaborate  contrast,  a picture  in  itself. 
You  may  try  every  other  piece  of  cloud  in  the  heaven, 
and  you  will  find  them  every  one  as  perfect,  and  yet  not 
one  in  the  least  like  another. 

Now  it  may  perhaps,  for  anything  we  know,  or  have 
yet  proved,  be  highly  expedient  and  proper,  in  art,  that 
this  variety,  individuality,  and  angular 
character  should  be  changed  into  a mass 
of  convex  curves,  each  precisely  like  its 
neighbor  in  all  respects,  and  unbroken  from  beginning 
to  end ; — it  may  be  highly  original,  masterly,  bold,  what- 
ever you  choose  to  call  it ; but  it  is  false.  I do  not  take 


§ 7.  Their  char- 
acters, as  given  by 
S.  Rosa. 


346 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS . 


upon  me  to  assert  that  the  clouds  which  in  ancient  Ger- 
many were  more  especially  and  peculiarly  devoted  to  the 
business  of  catching-  princesses  off  desert  islands,  and 
carrying  them  to  enchanted  castles,  might  not  have  pos- 
sessed something  of  the  pillowy  organization  which  we 
may  suppose  best  adapted  for  functions  of  such  delicacy 
and  dispatch.  But  I do  mean  to  say  that  the  clouds 
which  God  sends  upon  his  earth  as  the  ministers  of  dew, 
and  rain,  and  shade,  and  with  which  he  adorns  his  heaven, 
setting  them  in  its  vault  for  the  thrones  of  his  spirits, 
have  not  in  one  instant  or  atom  of  their  existence,  one 
feature  in  common  with  such  conceptions  and  creations. 
And  there  are,  beyond  dispute,  more  direct  and  unmiti- 
gated falsehoods  told,  and  more  laws  of  nature  set  at 
open  defiance  in  one  of  the  “ rolling  ” skies  of  Salvator, 
such  as  that  marked  159  in  the  Dulwich  Gallery,  than 
were  ever  attributed,  even  by  the  ignorant  and  unfeel- 
ing, to  all  the  wildest  flights  of  Turner  put  together. 

And  it  is  not  as  if  the  error  were  only  occasional.  It 
is  systematic  and  constant  in  all  the  Italian  masters  of 
,,  , the  seventeenth  century,  and  in  most  of 

§ 8.  Mo  n o t o n y J 

and  falsehood  of  the  Dutch.  They  looked  at  clouds  as  at 

tne  clouds  of  the 

Italian  school  gen-  everything  else  which  did  not  particularly 
help  them  in  their  great  end  of  deception, 
with  utter  carelessness  and  bluntness  of  feeling, — saw 
that  there  were  a great  many  rounded  passages  in  them, 
— found  it  much  easier  to  sweep  circles  than  to  design 
beauties,  and  sat  down  in  their  studies,  contented  with 
perpetual  repetitions  of  the  same  spherical  conceptions, 
having  about  the  same  relation  to  the  clouds  of  nature, 
that  a child’s  carving  of  a turnip  has  to  the  head  of  the 
Apollo.  Look  at  the  round  things  about  the  sun  in  the 
bricky  Claude,  the  smallest  of  the  three  Seaports  in  the 
National  Gallery.  They  are  a great  deal  more  like  half- 
crowns  than  clouds.  Take  the  ropy,  tough -looking 
wTeath  in  the  Sacrifice  of  Isaac,  and  find  one  part  of  it,  if 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


347 


you  can,  which  is  not  the  repetition  of  every  other  part 
of  it,  all  together  being  as  round  and  vapid  as  the  brush 
could  draw  them ; or  take  the  two  cauliflower-like  pro- 
tuberances in  No.  220  of  the  Dulwich  Gallery,  and  ad- 
mire the  studied  similarity  between  them ; you  cannot 
tell  which  is  which ; or  take  the  so-called  Nicholas  Pous- 
sin, No.  212,  Dulwich  Gallery,  in  which,  from  the  brown 
trees  to  the  right-hand  side  of  the  picture,  there  is  not 
one  line  which  is  not  physically  impossible. 

But  it  is  not  the  outline  only  which  is  thus  systemati- 
cally false.  The  drawing  of  the  solid  form  is  worse  still, 
for  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  although  . 

% a 9.  V 3St  Size  Oa 

clouds  of  course  arrange  themselves  more  congregated  maes- 

. . . es  of  cjoud. 

or  less  into  broad  masses,  with  a light  side 
and  dark  side,  both  their  light  and  shade  are  invariably 
composed  of  a series  of  divided  masses,  each  of  which 
has  in  its  outline  as  much  variety  and  character  as  the 
great  outline  of  the  cloud ; presenting,  therefore,  a 
thousand  times  repeated,  all  that  I have  described  as 
characteristic  of  the  general  form.  Nor  are  these  multi- 
tudinous divisions  a truth  of  slight  importance  in  the 
character  of  sky,  for  they  are  dependent  on,  and  illus- 
trative of,  a quality  which  is  usually  in  a great  degree 
overlooked,  — the  enormous  retiring  spaces  of  solid 
clouds.  Between  the  illumined  edge  of  a heaped  cloud, 
and  that  part  of  its  body  which  turns  into  shadow, 
there  will  generally  be  a clear  distance  of  several  miles, 
more  or  less  of  course,  according  to  the  general  size  of 
the  cloud,  but  in  such  large  masses  as  in  Poussin  and 
others  of  the  old  masters,  occupy  the  fourth  or  fifth  of 
the  visible  sky ; the  clear  illumined  breadth  of  vapor, 
from  the  edge  to  the  shadow,  involves  at  least  a distance 
of  five  or  six  miles.  We  are  little  apt,  in  watching  the 
changes  of  a mountainous  range  of  cloud,  to  reflect  that 
the  masses  of  vapor  which  compose  it,  are  huger  and 
higher  than  any  mountain  range  of  the  earth ; and  the 


348 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS . 


distances  between  mass  and  mass  are  not  yards  of  air 
traversed  in  an  instant  by  the  flying-  form,  bnt  valleys 
§ 10.  Demonstra-  of  changing  atmosphere  leagues  over; 
sin  with  that  the  slow  motion  of  ascending  curves, 

tam  ranges.  which  we  can  scarcely  trace,  is  a boiling 

energy  of  exulting  vapor  rushing  into  the  heaven  a thou- 
sand feet  in  a minute  ; and  that  the  toppling  angle  whose 
sharp  edge  almost  escapes  notice  in  the  multitudinous 
forms  around  it,  is  a nodding  precipice  of  storms,  3,000 
feet  from  base  to  summit.  It  is  not  until  we  have  actu- 
ally compared  the  forms  of  the  sky  with  the  hill  ranges 
of  the  earth,  and  seen  the  soaring  Alp  overtopped  and 
buried  in  one  surge  of  the  sky,  that  we  begin  to  conceive 
or  appreciate  the  colossal  scale  of  the  phenomena  of  the 
latter.  But  of  this  there  can  be  no  doubt  in  the  mind  of 
any  one  accustomed  to  trace  the  forms  of  clouds  among 
hill  ranges — as  it  is  there  a demonstrable  and  evident 
fact,  that  the  space  of  vapor  visibly  extended  over  an 
ordinarily  cloudy  sky,  is^liot  less,  from  the  point  nearest 
to  the  observer  to  the  horizon,  than  twenty  leagues ; that 
the  size  of  every  mass  of  separate  form,  if  it  be  at  all 
largely  divided,  is  to  be  expressed  in  terms  of  miles  ; and 
that  every  boiling  heap  of  illuminated  mist  in  the  nearer 
sky,  is  an  enormous  mountain,  fifteen  or  twenty  thousand 
feet  in  height,  six  or  seven  miles  over  an  illuminated  sur- 
face, furrowed  by  a thousand  colossal  ravines,  torn  by 
local  tempests  into  peaks  and  promontories,  and  chang- 
ing its  features  with  the  majestic  velocity  of  the  volcano. 

To  those  who  have  once  convinced  themselves  of  these 
proportions  of  the  heaven,  it  will  be  immediately  evi- 
§ u.  And  conse-  dent,  that  though  we  might,  without  much 
andntvarStYes°of  violation  of  truth,  omit  the  minor  divisions 
feature.  0f  a cloud  four  yards  over,  it  is  the  veriest 

audacity  of  falsehood  to  omit  those  of  masses  where  for 
yards  we  have  to  read  miles ; first,  because  it  is  physically 
impossible  that  such  a space  should  be  without  many  and 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


349 


vast  divisions ; secondly,  because  divisions  at  such  dis- 
tances must  be  sharply  and  forcibly  marked  by  aerial 
perspective,  so  that  not  only  they  must  be  there,  but 
they  must  be  visible  and  evident  to  the  eye ; and  thirdly, 
because  these  multitudinous  divisions  are  absolutely 
necessary,  in  order  to  express  this  space  and  distance, 
which  cannot  but  be  fully  and  imperfectly  felt,  even  with 
every  aid  and  evidence  that  art  can  give  of  it. 

Now  if  an  artist  taking  for  his  subject  a chain  of  vast 
mountains,  several  leagues  long,  were  to  unite  all  their 
varieties  of  ravine,  crag,  chasm,  and  preci-  § 12.  Not  lightly 
pice,  into  one  solid,  unbroken  mass,  with  to  be  omitted- 
one  light  side  and  one  dark  Side,  looking  like  a white 
ball  or  parallelepiped  two  yards  broad,  the  words 
“ breadth,”  “ boldness,”  or  “ generalization,”  would 
scarcely  be  received  as  a sufficient  apology  for  a proceed- 
ing so  glaringly  false,  and  so  painfully  degrading.  But 
when,  instead  of  the  really  large  and  sinrple  forms  of 
mountains,  united,  as  they  commonly  are,  by  some  great 
principle  of  common  organization,  and  so  closely  re- 
sembling each  other  as  often  to  correspond  in  line,  and 
join  in  effect ; when  instead  of  this,  we  have  to  do  with 
spaces  of  cloud  twice  as  vast,  broken  up  into  a multipli- 
city of  forms  necessary  to,  and  characteristic  of,  their  very 
nature — those  forms  subject  to  a thousand  local  changes, 
having  no  association  with  each  other,  and  rendered 
visible  in  a thousand  places  by  their  own  transparency 
or  cavities,  where  the  mountain  forms  would  be  lost  in 
shade, — that  this  far  greater  space,  and  this  far  more 
complicated  arrangement,  should  be  all  summed  up  into 
one  round  mass,  with  one  swell  of  white,  and  one  flat  side 
of  unbroken  gray,  is  considered  an  evidence  of  the  sub- 
limest  powers  in  the  artist  of  generalization  and  breadth. 
Now  it  may  be  broad,  it  may  be  grand,  it  may  be  beauti- 
ful, artistical,  and  in  every  way  desirable.  I don’t  say 
it  is  not — I merely  say  it  is  a concentration  of  every  kind 


350 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS . 


of  falsehood : it  is  depriving  heaven  of  its  space,  clouds 
of  their  buoyancy,  winds  of  their  motion,  and  distance  of 
its  blue. 

This  is  done,  more  or  less,  by  all  the  old  masters,  with- 
out an  exception.*  Their  idea  of  clouds  was  altogether 
similar ; more  or  less  perfectly  carried  out, 

§ 13.  Imperfect  ^ J * 

conceptions  of  this  according  to  their  power  oi  hand  and  accu- 
size  and  extent  . . ,,  , 

in  ancient  land-  racy  oi  eye,  but  universally  the  same  m 
conception.  It  was  the  idea  of  a compara- 
tively small,  round,  puffed-up  white  body,  irregularly 
associated  with  other  round  and  puffed-up  white  bodies, 
each  with  a white  light  side,  and  a gray  dark  side,  and  a 
soft  reflected  light,  floating  a great  way  below  a blue 
dome.  Such  is  the  idea  of  a cloud  formed  by  most  peo- 
ple ; it  is  the  first,  general,  uncultivated  notion  of  what 
we  see  every  day.  People  think  of  the  clouds  as  about 
as  large  as  they  look — forty  yards  over,  perhaps ; they 
see  generally  that  they  are  solid  bodies  subject  to  the 
same  laws  as  other  solid  bodies,  roundish,  whitish,  and 
apparently  suspended  a great  way  under  a high  blue 
concavity.  So  that  these  ideas  be  tolerably  given  with 
smooth  paint,  they  are  content,  and  call  it  nature.  How 
different  it  is  from  anything  that  nature  ever  did,  or 
ever  will  do,  I have  endeavored  to  show ; but  I cannot, 
and  do  not,  expect  the  contrast  to  be  fully  felt,  unless 
the  reader  will  actually  go  out  on  days  when,  either  be- 
fore or  after  rain,  the  clouds  arrange  themselves  into 
vigorous  masses,  and  after  arriving  at  something  like  a 
conception  of  their  distance  and  size,  from  the  mode  in 
which  they  retire  over  the  horizon,  will  for  himself  trace 
and  watch  their  varieties  of  form  and  outline,  as  mass 
rises  over  mass  in  their  illuminated  bodies.  Let  him 
climb  from  step  to  step  over  their  craggy  and  broken 
slopes,  let  him  plunge  into  the  long  vistas  of  immeasur- 

* Here  I include  even  the  great  ones — even  Titian  and  Veronese,— 
excepting  only  Tintoret  and  the  religious  schools. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS . 


351 


able  perspective,  that  guide  back  to  the  blue  sky;  and 
when  he  finds  his  imagination  lost  in  their  immensity, 
and  his  senses  confused  with  their  multitude,  let  him  go 
to  Claude,  to  Salvator,  or  to  Poussin,  and  ask  them  for  a 
like  space,  or  like  infinity. 

But  perhaps  the  most  grievous  fault  of  all,  in  the 
clouds  of  these  painters,  is  the  utter  want  of  transpar- 
ency. Not  in  her  most  ponderous  and  g 14  Total  want 
lightless  masses  will  nature  ever  leave  us  °*d  ^vaSence 
without  some  evidence  of  transmitted  sun-  laadbdcsapgf 

shine;  and  she  perpetually  gives  us  pas- 
sages in  which  the  vapor  becomes  visible  only  by  the 
sunshine  which  it  arrests  and  holds  within  itself,  not 
caught  on  its  surface,  but  entangled  in  its  mass— floating 
fleeces,  precious  with  the  gold  of  heaven ; and  this 
translucency  is  especially  indicated  on  the  dark  sides 
even  of  her  heaviest  wreaths,  which  possess  opalescent 
and  delicate  hues  of  partial  illumination,  far  more  de- 
pendent upon  the  beams  which  pass  through  them  than 
on  those  which  are  reflected  upon  them.  Nothing,  on 
the  contrary,  can  be  more  painfulty  and  ponderously 
opaque  than  the  clouds  of  the  old  masters  universally. 
However  far  removed  in  aerial  distance,  and  however 
brilliant  in  light,  they  never  appear  filmy  or  evanescent, 
and  their  light  is  always  on  them,  not  in  them.  And  this 
effect  is  much  increased  by  the  positive  and  persevering 
determination  on  the  part  of  their  outlines  not  to  be 
broken  in  upon,  nor  interfered  with  in  the  slightest  de- 
gree, by  any  presumptuous  blue,  or  impertinent  winds. 
There  is  no  inequality,  no  variation,  no  losing  or  disguis- 
ing of  line,  no  melting  into  nothingness,  nor  shattering 
into  spray ; edge  succeeds  edge  with  imperturbable  equa- 
nimity, and  nothing  short  of  the  most  decided  interfer- 
ence on  the  part  of  tree-tops,  or  the  edge  of  the  picture, 
prevents  us  from  being  able  to  follow  them  all  the  way 
round,  like  the  coast  of  an  island. 


r 


352  OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 

And  be  it  remembered  that  all  these  faults  and  defi- 
ciencies are  to  be  found  in  their  drawing  merely  of  the 

separate  masses  of  the  solid  cumulus,  the 

§15.  Farther  . . ..  - „ ' , 

proof  of  their  de-  easiest  drawn  oi  all  clouds.  .But  nature 

ficiency  in  space.  , 

scarcely  ever  confines  herselt  to  such 
masses ; they  form  but  the  thousandth  part  of  her  vari- 
ety of  effect.  She  builds  up  a pyramid  of  their  boiling 
volumes,  bars  this  across  like  a mountain  with  the  gray 
cirrus,  envelops  it  in  black,  ragged,  drifting  vapor,  cov- 
ers the  open  part  of  the  sky  with  mottled  horizontal 
fields,  breaks  through  these  with  sudden  and  long  sun- 
beams, tears  up  their  edges  with  local  winds,  scatters  over 
the  gaps  of  blue  the  infinity  of  multitude  of  the  high 
cirri,  and  melts  even  the  unoccupied  azure  into  palpitat- 
ing shades.  And  all  this  is  done  over  and  over  again  in 
every  quarter  of  a mile.  Where  Poussin  or  Claude  have 
three  similar  masses,  nature  has  fifty  pictures,  made  up 
each  of  millions  of  minor  thoughts — fifty  aisles  penetrat- 
ing through  angelic  chapels  to  the  Shechinah  of  the 
blue — fifty  hollow  ways  among  bewildered  hills — each 
with  their  own  nodding  rocks,  and  cloven  precipices, 
and  radiant  summits,  and  robing  vapors,  but  all  unlike 
each  other,  except  in  beauty,  all  bearing  witness  to  the 
unwearied,  exhaustless  operation  of  the  Infinite  Mind. 
Now,  in  cases  like  these  especially,  as  we  observed  be- 
fore of  general  nature,  though  it  is  altogether  hopeless 
to  follow  out  in  the  space  of  any  one  picture  this  incal- 
culable and  inconceivable  glory,  yet  the  painter  can  at 
least  see  that  the  space  he  has  at  his  command,  narrow 
and  confined  as  it  is,  is  made  complete  use  of,  and  that 
no  part  of  it  shall  be  without  entertainment  and  food  for 
thought.  If  he  could  subdivide  it  by  millionths  of 
inches,  he  could  not  reach  the  multitudinous  majesty  of 
nature ; but  it  is  at  least  incumbent  upon  him  to  make 
the  most  of  what  he  has,  and  not,  by  exaggerating  the 
proportions,  banishing  the  variety  and  repeating  the 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


353 


forms  of  his  clouds,  to  set  at  defiance  the  eternal  princi- 
ples of  the  heavens — fitfulness  and  infinity.  And  now 
let  us,  keeping-  in  memory  what  we  have  seen  of  Poussin 
and  Salvator,  take  up  one  of  Turner’s  skies  and  see 
whether  he  is  as  narrow  in  his  conception,  or  as  niggardly 
in  his  space.  It  does  not  matter  which  we  § 16.  instance  of 
take,  his  sublime  Babylon*  is  a fair  exam-  the^ky  ^ofVar- 
ple  for  our  present  purpose.  Ten  miles  ners  Babylon, 
away,  down  the  Euphrates,  where  it  gleams  last  along 
the  plain,  he  gives  us  a drift  of  dark  elongated  vapor, 
melting  beneath  into  a dim  haze  which  embraces  the 
hills  on  the  horizon.  It  is  exhausted  with  its  own  mo- 
tion, and  broken  up  by  the  wind  in  its  own  body  into 
numberless  groups  of  billowy  and  tossing  fragments, 
which,  beaten  by  the  weight  of  storm  down  to  the  earth, 
are  just  lifting  themselves  again  on  wearied  wings,  and 
perishing  in  the  effort.  Above  these,  and  far  beyond 
them,  the  eye  goes  back  to  a broad  sea  of  white,  illumin- 
ated mist,  or  rather  cloud  melted  into  rain,  and  absorbed 
again  before  that  rain  has  fallen,  but  penetrated  through- 
out, whether  it  be  vapor  or  whether  it  be  dew,  with  soft 
sunshine,  turning  it  as  white  as  snow.  Gradually  as  it 
rises,  the  rainy  fusion  ceases,  you  cannot  tell  where  the 
film  of  blue  on  the  left  begins — but  it  is  deepening',  deep- 
ening still, — and  the  cloud,  with  its  edge  first  invisible, 
then  all  but  imaginary,  then  just  felt  when  the  eye  is  not 
fixed  on  it,  and  lost  when  it  is,  at  last  rises,  keen  from 
excessive  distance,  but  soft  and  mantling  in  its  bod}^,  as 
a swan’s  bosom  fretted  by  faint  wind,  heaving  fitfully 
against  the  delicate  deep  blue,  with  white  waves,  whose 
forms  are  traced  by  the  pale  lines  of  opalescent  shadow, 
shade  only  because  the  light  is  within  it,  and  not  upon 
it,  and  which  break  with  their  own  swiftness  into  a 
driven  line  of  level  spray,  winnowed  into  threads  by  the 
wind,  and  flung  before  the  following  vapor  like  those 

* Engraved  in  Findel’s  Bible  Illustrations. 

23 


354 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS . 


swift  shafts  of  arrowy  water  which  a great  cataract 
shoots  into  the  air  beside  it,  trying  to  find  the  earth. 
Beyond  these,  again,  rises  a colossal  mountain  of  gray 
cumulus,  through  whose  shadowed  sides  the  sunbeams 
penetrate  in  dim,  sloping,  rain-like  shafts;  and  over 
which  they  fall  in  a broad  burst  of  streaming  light,  sink- 
ing to  the  earth,  and  showing  through  their  own  visible 
radiance  the  three  successive  ranges  of  hills  which  con- 
nect its  desolate  plain  with  space.  Above,  the  edgy 
summit  of  the  cumulus,  broken  into  fragments,  recedes 
into  the  sky,  which  is  peopled  in  its  serenity  with  quiet 
multitudes  of  the  white,  soft,  silent  cirrus ; and  under 
these  again,  drift  near  the  zenith,  disturbed  and  impatient 
shadows  of  a darker  spirit,  seeking  rest  and  finding  none. 

Now  this  is  nature ! It  is  the’exhaustless  living  energy 
with  which  the  universe  is  filled ; and  what  will  you  set 
§ 17.  And  in  his  beside  it  of  the  works  of  other  men  ? Show 
Poole  of  Solomon.  me  & sjng.}e  picture,  in  the  whole  compass 

of  ancient  art,  in  which  I can  pass  from  cloud  to  cloud, 
from  region  to  region,  from  first  to  second  and  third 
heaven,  as  I can  here,  and  you  may  talk  of  Turner’s  want 
of  truth.  Turn  to  the  Pools  of  Solomon,  and  walk 
through  the  passages  of  mist  as  they  melt  on  the  one 
hand  into  those  stormy  fragments  of  fiery  cloud,  or,  on 
the  other,  into  the  cold  solitary  shadows  that  compass 
the  sweeping  hill,  and  when  you  find  an  inch  without  air 
and  transparency,  and  a hairbreadth  without  changeful - 
ness  and  thought;  and  when  you  can  count  the  torn 
waves  of  tossing  radiance  that  gush  from  the  sun,  as  you 
can  count  the  fixed,  white,  insipidities  of  Claude  ; or  when 
you  can  measure  the  modulation  and  the  depth  of  that 
hollow  mist,  as  you  can  the  flourishes  of  the  brush  upon 
the  canvas  of  Salvator,  talk  of  Turner’s  want  of  truth  ! 

But  let  us  take  up  simpler  and  less  elaborate  works, 
for  there  is  too  much  in  these  to  admit  of  being  analyzed. 

In  the  vignette  of  the  Lake  of  Como,  in  Rogers’s  Italy, 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


355 


the  space  is  so  small  that  the  details  have  been  partially 
lost  by  the  engraver;  but  enough  remain  to  illustrate 
the  great  principles  of  cloud  from  which  m 

, 11,  1 • § 18.  Truths  of 

we  have  endeavored  to  explain.  Observe  outline  and  char- 

_ ..  acter  in  his  Como. 

first  the  general  angular  outline  of  the  vol- 
umes on  the  left  of  the  sun.  If  you  mark  the  points 
where  the  direction  of  their  outline  changes,  and  connect 
those  points  by  right  lines,  the  cloud  will  touch,  but  will 
not  cut,  those  lines  throughout.  Yet  its  contour  is  as 
graceful  as  it  is  full  of  character — toppling,  ready  to 
change  — fragile  as  enormous  — evanescent  as  colossal. 
Observe  how,  where  it  crosses  the  line  of  the  sun,  it  be- 
comes luminous,  illustrating  what  has  been  observed  of 
the  visibility  of  mist  in  sunlight.  Observe,  above  all,  the 
multiplicity  of  its  solid  form,  the  depth  of  its  shadows 
in  perpetual  transition ; it  is  not  round  and  swelled,  half 
light  and  half  dark,  but  full  of  breaking  irregular  shadow 
and  transparency — variable  as  the  wind,  and  melting 
imperceptibly  above  into  the  haziness  of  the  sun-lighted 
atmosphere,  contrasted  in  all  its  vast  forms  with  the  deli- 
cacy and  the  multitude  of  the  brightly  touched  cirri. 
Nothing  can  surpass  the  truth  of  this ; the  cloud  is  as 
gigantic  in  its  simplicity  as  the  Alp  which  it  opposes ; 
but  how  various,  how  transparent,  how  infinite  in  its  or- 
ganization ! 

I would  draw  especial  attention,  both  here  and  in  all 
other  works  of  Turner,  to  the  beautiful  use  of  the  low 
horizontal  bars  or  fields  of  cloud,  (cirro-  § i9.  Association 
stratus,)  which  associate  themselves  so  fre- 
quently — more  especially  before  storms — mulus* 
with  the  true  cumulus,  floating  on  its  flanks,  or  capping 
it,  as  if  it  were  a mountain,  and  seldom  mingling  with 
its  substance,  unless  in  the  very  formation  of  rain.  They 
supply  us  with  one  of  those  beautiful  instances  of  nat- 
ural composition,  by  which  the  artist  is  superseded  and 
excelled  — for,  by  the  occurrence  of  these  horizontal 


356 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


flakes,  the  rolling  form  of  the  cumulus  is  both  opposed 
in  its  principal  lines,  and  gifted  with  an  apparent  solid- 
ity and  vastness,  which  no  other  expedient  could  have 
exhibited,  and  which  far  exceed  in  awfulness  the  impres- 
sion of  the  noblest  mountains  of  the  earth.  I have  seen 
in  the  evening  light  of  Italy,  the  Alps  themselves  out- 
towered  by  ranges  of  these  mighty  clouds,  alternately 
white  in  the  starlight,  and  inhabited  by  fire. 

Turn  back  to  the  first  vignette  in  the  Italy.  The  an- 
gular outlines  and  variety  of  modulation  in  the  clouds 

20  Th  dee  a^ove  and  the  delicate  atmos- 

based  knowledge  phere  of  morning  into  which  they  are  dis- 
Turner’s  Lake  of  solved  about  the  breathing  hills,  require 

no  comment ; but  one  part  of  this  vignette 
demands  especial  notice  ; it  is  the  repetition  of  the  out- 
line of  the  snowy  mountain  by  the  light  cloud  above  it. 
The  cause  of  this  I have  already  explained  (vide  page 
343,)  and  its  occurrence  here  is  especially  valuable  as 
bearing  witness  to  the  thorough  and  scientific  knowledge 
thrown  by  Turner  into  his  slightest  works.  The  thing 
cannot  be  seen  once  in  six  months ; it  would  not  have 
been  noticed,  much  less  introduced,  by  an  ordinary  ar- 
tist, and  to  the  public  it  is  a dead  letter,  or  an  offence. 
Ninety-nine  persons  in  a hundred  would  not  have  ob- 
served this  pale  wreath  of  parallel  cloud  above  the  hill, 
and  the  hundredth  in  all  probability  says  it  is  unnatural. 
It  requires  the  most  intimate  and  accurate  knowledge  of 
the  Alps  before  such  a piece  of  refined  truth  can  be 
understood. 

At  the  216th  page  we  have  another  and  a new  case,  in 
which  clouds  in  perfect  repose,  unaffected  by  wind,  or 

21  Further  any  in^uence  hut  ^a^  i'heir  own  elastic 
p r i n c i p i e s o f force,  boil,  rise,  and  melt  in  the  heaven 

cloud  form  exem-  - i i i n 

piified  in  his  with  more  approacli  to  globular  lorm  tlian 
under  any  other  circumstances  is  possible. 
I name  this  vignette,  not  only  because  it  is  most  re- 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


357 


markable  for  the  buoyancy  and  elasticity  of  inward 
energy,  indicated  through  the  most  ponderous  forms, 
and  affords  us  a beautiful  instance  of  the  junction  of  the 
cirrostratus  with  the  cumulus,  of  which  we  have  just 
been  speaking  (§  19,)  but  because  it  is  a characteristic 
example  of  Turner’s  use  of  one  of  the  facts  of  nature 
not  hitherto  noticed,  that  the  edge  of  a partially  trans- 
parent body  is  often  darker  than  its  central  surface, 
because  at  the  edge  the  light  penetrates  and  passes 
through,  which  from  the  centre  is  reflected  to  the  eye. 
The  sharp,  cutting  edge  of  a wave,  if  not  broken  into 
foam,  frequently  appears  for  an  instant  almost  black ; 
and  the  outlines  of  these  massy  clouds,  where  their  pro- 
jecting forms  rise  in  relief  against  the  light  of  their 
bodies,  are  almost  always  marked  clearly  and  firmly  by 
very  dark  edges.  Hence  we  have  frequently,  if  not  con- 
stantly, multitudinous  forms  indicated  only  by  outline, 
giving  character  and  solidity  to  the  great  masses  of 
light,  without  taking  away  from  their  breadth.  And 
Turner  avails  himself  of  these  boldly  and  constantly, — 
outlining  forms  with  the  brush  of  which  no  other  indi- 
cation is  given.  All  the  grace  and  solidity  of  the  white 
cloud  on  the  right-hand  side  of  the  vignette  before  us, 
depend  upon  such  outlines. 

As  I before  observed  of  mere  execution,  that  one  of 
the  best  tests  of  its  excellence  was  the  expression  of 
infinity  ; so  it  may  be  noticed  with  respect  ^ f 

to  the  painting  of  details  generally,  that  insisting  on  the 
more  difference  lies  between  one  artist  and  ner’s  works,  in- 

. , . , ...  . p . i • t i finity  is  almost  an 

another,  m the  attainment  ot  this  quality,  unerring  test  of 
than  in  any  other  of  the  efforts  of  art ; and  aU  1:1 uth' 
that  if  we  wish,  without  reference  to  beauty  of  com- 
position, or  any  other  interfering  circumstances,  to  form 
a judgment  of  the  truth  of  painting,  perhaps  the  very 
first  thing  we  should  look  for,  whether  in  one  thing  or 
another — foliage,  or  clouds,  or  waves — should  be  the  ex- 


358 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


pression  of  infinity  always  and  everywhere,  in  all  parts 
and  division  of  parts.  For  we  may  be  quite  sure  that 
what  is  not  infinite,  cannot  be  true ; it  does  not,  indeed, 
follow  that  what  is  infinite,  always  is  true,  but  it  cannot 
be  altogether  false,  for  this  simple  reason  ; that  it  is  im- 
possible for  mortal  mind  to  compose  an  infinity  of  any 
kind  for  itself,  or  to  form  an  idea  of  perpetual  variation, 
and  to  avoid  all  repetition,  merely  by  its  own  combining 
resources.  The  moment  that  we  trust  to  ourselves,  we 
repeat  ourselves,  and  therefore  the  moment  we  see  in  a 
work  of  any  kind  whatsoever,  the  expression  of  infinity, 
we  may  be  certain  that  the  workman  has  gone  to  nature 
for  it ; while,  on  the  other  hand,  the  moment  we  see  re- 
petition, or  want  of  infinity,  we  may  be  certain  that  the 
workman  has  not  gone  to  nature  for  it. 

For  instance,  in  the  picture  of  Salvator  before  noticed, 
No.  220  in  the  Dulwich  Gallery,  as  we  see  at  once  that 
§ 23.  Instances  the  two  masses  of  cloud  absolutely  repeat 
of itin Se1 works  each  other  in  every  one  of  their  forms, 
of  Salvator.  and  that  each  is  composed  of  about  twelve 

white  sweeps  of  the  brush,  all  forming  the  same  curve, 
and  all  of  the  same  length  ; and  as  we  can  count  these, 
and  measure  their  common  diameter,  and  by  stating  the 
same  to  anybody  else,  convey  to  him  a full  and  perfect 
idea  and  knowledge  of  that  sky  in  all  its  parts  and  pro- 
portions,— as  we  can  do  this,  we  may  be  absolutely  cer- 
tain, without  reference  to  the  real  sky,  or  to  any  other 
part  of  nature,  without  even  knowing  what  the  white 
things  were  intended  for,  we  may  be  certain  that  they 
cannot  possibly  resemble  anything ; that  whatever  they 
were  meant  for,  they  can  be  nothing  but  a violent  con- 
tradiction of  all  nature’s  principles  and  forms.  When, 
on  the  other  hand,  we  take  up  such  a sky  as  that  of 
Turner’s  Eouen,  seen  from  St.  Catherine’s  Hill,  in  the 
Rivers  of  France,  and  find,  in  the  first  place,  that  he 
has  given  us  a distance  over  the  hills  in  the  horizon, 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


359 


into  which,  when  we  are  tired  of  penetrating1,  we  must 
turn  and  come  back  again,  there  being  not  the  remotest 
chance  of  getting  to  the  end  of  it;  and 

i • i j*  824  And  of  the 

when  we  see  that  irom  this  measureless  dis-  universal  pres- 

. ,n  *,in  iii*  ence  of  it  in  those 

tance  up  to  the  zenith,  the  whole  sky  is  one  of  Turner.  The 

P , , pi  n iTi,  conclusions  which 

ocean  o±  alternate  waves  ol  cloud  and  light,  may  be  arrived  at 
so  blended  together  that  the  eye  can-  fromit‘ 
not  rest  on  any  one  without  being  guided  to  the  next, 
and  so  to  a hundred  more,  till  it  is  lost  over  and  over 
again  in  every  wreath — that  if  it  divides  the  sky  into 
quarters  of  inches,  and  tries  to  count  or  comprehend  the 
component  parts  of  any  single  one  of  those  divisions,  it 
is  still  as  utterly  defied  and  defeated  by  the  part  as  by  the 
whole — that  there  is  not  one  line  out  of  the  millions 
there  which  repeats  another,  not  one  which  is  uncon- 
nected with  another,  not  one  which  does  not  in  itself 
convey  histories  of  distance  and  space,  and  suggest  new 
and  changeful  form ; then  we  may  be  all  but  certain, 
though  these  forms  are  too  mysterious  and  too  delicate 
for  us  to  analyze — though  all  is  so  crowded  and  so  con- 
nected that  it  is  impossible  to  test  any  single  part  by 
particular  laws — yet  without  any  such  tests,  we  may  be 
sure  that  this  infinity  can  only  be  based  on  truth— that  it 
must  be  nature,  because  man  could  not  have  originated 
it,  and  that  every  form  must  be  faithful,  because  none  is 
like  another.  And  therefore  it  is  that  I insist  so  con- 
stantly on  this  great  quality  of  landscape  painting,  as  it 
appears  in  Turner ; because  it  is  not  merely  a constant 
and  most  important  truth  in  itself,  but  it  almost  amounts 
to  a demonstration  of  every  other  truth.  § 2s.  The  muiti- 
And  it  will  be  found  a far  rarer  attainment  toease 

in  the  works  of  other  men  than  is  com-  Sot^ve  “S  h£ 
monly  supposed,  and  the  sign,  wherever  it  }ty?bliUR°thenfire' 
is  really  found,  of  the  very  highest  art.  BOUrce  ofnovices. 
For  we  are  apt  to  forget  that  the  greatest  number  is  no 
nearer  infinity  than  the  least,  if  it  be  definite  number ; 


360 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


and  the  vastest  bulk  is  no  nearer  infinity  than  the  most 
minute,  if  it  be  definite  bulk ; so  that  a man  may  multi- 
ply his  objects  forever  and  ever,  and  be  no  nearer  infinity 
than  he  had  reached  with  one,  if  he  do  not  vary  them 
and  confuse  them;  and  a man  may  reach  infinity  in 
every  touch  and  line,  and  part,  and  unit,  if  in  these  he 
be  truthfully  various  and  obscure.  And  we  shall  find, 
the  more  we  examine  the  works  of  the  old  masters,  that 
always,  and  in  all  parts,  they  are  totally  wanting*  in 
every  feeling  of  infinity,  and  therefore  in  all  truth  : and 
even  in  the  works  of  the  moderns,  though  the  aim  is  far 
more  just,  we  shall  frequently  perceive  an  erroneous 
choice  of  means,  and  a substitution  of  mere  number  or 
bulk  for  real  infinity. 

And  therefore,  in  concluding  our  notice  of  the  central 
cloud  region,  I should  wish  to  dwell  particularly  on 
§ 26.  Further  in-  those  skies  of  Turner’s  in  which  we  have 
stances  of^mfmity  wi1Qie  space  of  the  heaven  covered 

of  Turner.  with  the  delicate  dim  flakes  of  gathering 

vapor,  which  are  the  intermediate  link  between  the  cen- 
tral region  and  that  of  the  rain-cloud,  and  which  as- 
semble and  grow  out  of  the  air ; shutting  up  the  heaven 
with  a gray  interwoven  veil,  before  the  approach  of 
storm,  faint,  but  universal,  letting  the  light  of  the  upper 
sky  pass  pallidly  through  their  body,  but  never  rending 
a passage  for  the  ray.  We  have  the  first  approach  and 
gathering  of  this  kind  of  sky  most  gloriously  given  in 
the  vignette  at  page  115  of  Rogers’s  Italy,  which  is  one 
of  the  most  perfect  pieces  of  feeling  (if  I may  transgress 
my  usual  rules  for  an  instant)  extant  in  art,  owing  to  the 
extreme  grandeur  and  stern  simplicity  of  the  strange 
and  ominous  forms  of  level  cloud  behind  the  building. 
In  that  at  page  223,  there  are  passages  of  the  same  kind, 
of  exceeding  perfection.  The  sky  through  which  the 
dawn  is  breaking  in  the  Voyage  of  Columbus,  and  that 
with  the  Moonlight  under  the  Rialto,  in  Rogers’s  Poems, 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS . 


361 


the  skies  of  the  Betlielehem,  and  the  Pyramids  in  Fin- 
den’s  Bible  series,  and  among  the  Academy  pictures, 
that  of  the  Hero  and  Leander,  and  Flight  into  Egypt, 
are  characteristic  and  noble  examples,  as  far  as  any  in- 
dividual works  can  be  characteristic  of  the  universality 
of  this  mighty  mind.  I ought  not  to  forget  the  magni- 
ficent solemnity  and  fulness  of  the  wreaths  of  gathering 


darkness  in  the  Folkestone. 

We  must  not  pass  from  the  consideration  of  the  cen- 
tral cloud  region  without  noticing  the  general  high  qual- 
ity of  the  cloud-drawing  of  Stanfield.  He  s 27.  The  excel. 
is  limited  in  his  range,  and  is  apt  in  exten-  drawing1 ofClstS£ 
sive  compositions  to  repeat  himself,  nei-  fieitL 
ther  is  he  ever  very  refined  ; but  his  cloud-form  is  firmly 
and  fearlessly  chiselled,  with  perfect  knowledge,  though 
usually  with  some  want  of  feeling.  As  far  as  it  goes,  it 
is  very  grand  and  very  tasteful,  beautifully  developed  in 
the  space  of  its  solid  parts  and  full  of  action.  Next  to 
Turner,  he  is  incomparably  the  noblest  master  of  cloud- 
form  of  all  our  artists ; in  fact,  he  is  the  only  one  among 
them  who  really  can  draiv  a cloud.  For  it  is  a very  dif- 
ferent thing  to  rub  out  an  irregular  white  space  neatly 
with  the  handkerchief,  or  to  leave  a bright  little  bit  of 
paper  in  the  middle  of  a wash,  than  to  give  the  real  anat- 
omy of  cloud-form  with  perfect  articula-  ^ The 
tion  of  chiaroscuro.  We  have  multitudes  Branding  of  the 
of  painters  who  can  throw  a light  bit  of  En&llsh  schoo“ 
straggling  vapor  across  their  sky,  or  leave  in  it  delicate 
aud  tender  passages  of  breaking  light;  but  this  is  a 
very  different  thing  from  taking  up  each  of  those  bits  or 
passages,  and  giving  it  structure,  and  parts,  and  solidity. 
The  eye  is  satisfied  with  exceedingly  little,  as  an  indica- 
tion of  cloud,  and  a few  clever  sweeps  of  the  brush  on 
wet  paper  may  give  all  that  it  requires ; but  this  is  not 
drawing  clouds,  nor  will  it  ever  appeal  fully  and  deeply 
to  the  mind,  except  when  it  occurs  only  as  a part  of  a 


362 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


higher  system.  And  there  is  not  one  of  our  modern  ar- 
tists, except  Stanfield,  who  can  do  much  more  than  this. 
As  soon  as  they  attempt  to  lay  detail  upon  their  clouds 
they  appear  to  get  bewildered,  forget  that  they  are  deal- 
ing with  forms  regulated  by  precisely  the  same  simple 
laws  of  light  and  shade  as  more  substantial  matter,  over- 
charge their  color,  confuse  their  shadows  and  dark  sides, 
and  end  in  mere  ragged  confusion.  I believe  the  evil 
arises  from  their  never  attempting  to  render  clouds  ex- 
cept with  the  brush ; other  objects,  at  some  period  of 
study,  they  take  up  with  the  chalk  or  lead,  and  so  learn 
something  of  their  form ; but  they  appear  to  consider 
clouds  as  altogether  dependent  on  cobalt  and  camel’s 
hair,  and  so  never  understand  anything  of  their  real 
anatomy.  But  whatever  the  cause,  I cannot  point  to  any 
central  clouds  of  the  moderns,  except  those  of  Turner 
and  Stanfield,  as  really  showing  much  knowledge  of,  or 
feeling  for,  nature,  though  all  are  superior  to  the  con- 
ventional and  narrow  conceptions  of  the  ancients.  We 
are  all  right  as  far  as  we  go,  our  work  may  be  incom- 
plete, but  it  is  not  false ; and  it  is  far  better,  far  less  in- 
jurious to  the  mind,  that  we  should  be  little  attracted 
to  the  sky,  and  taught  to  be  satisfied  with  a light  sug- 
gestion of  truthful  form,  than  that  we  be  drawn  to  it  by 
violently  pronounced  outline  and  intense  color,  to  find 
in  its  finished  falsehood  everything  to  displease  or  to 
mislead — to  hurt  our  feelings,  if  we  have  foundation  for 
them,  and  corrupt  them,  if  we  have  none. 


CHAPTEK  IY. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS:  THIRDLY,  OF  THE  REGION  OF  THE 

RAIN-CLOUD. 

The  clouds  which  I wish  to  consider  as  characteristic  of 
the  lower,  or  rainy  region,  differ  not  so  much  in  their  real 
nature  from  those  of  the  central  and  uppermost  regions, 
as  in  appearance,  owing  to  their  greater 

-r,  ’ , , , -|  , §1.  The  apparent 

nearness,  h or  the  central  clouds,  and  per-  difference  in  char- 

haps  even  the  high  cirri,  deposit  moisture,  lower  and  central 
. P . n clouds  is  depend- 

it  not  distinctly  ram,  as  is  sufficiently  ent  chiefly  on 
proved  by  the  existence  of  snow  on  the  pr0Ximity- 
highest  peaks  of  the  Himaleh ; and  when,  on  any  such 
mountains,  we  are  brought  into  close  contact  with  the 
central  clouds,*  we  find  them  little  differing  from  the  or- 
dinary rain-cloud  of  the  plains,  except  by  being  slightly 
less  dense  and  dark.  But  the  apparent  differences,  de- 
pendent on  proximity,  are  most  marked  and  important. 

In  the  first  place,  the  clouds  of  the  central  region 
have,  as  has  been  before  observed,  pure  and  aerial  grays 
for  their  dark  sides,  owing  to  the  necessary  g 2 Thelr  marked 
distance  from  the  observer;  and  as  this  difference  in  color, 
distance  permits  a multitude  of  local  phenomena  capa- 
ble of  influencing  color,  such  as  accidental  sunbeams, 

* I am  unable  to  say  to  what  height  the  real  rain-cloud  may  extend  ; 
perhaps  there  are  no  mountains  which  rise  altogether  above  storm.  I 
have  never  been  in  a violent  storm  at  a greater  height  than  between 
8,000  and  9,000  feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea.  There  the  rain-cloud 
is  exceedingly  light,  compared  to  the  ponderous  darkness  of  the  lower 
air. 


3t>I 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


refractions,  transparencies,  or  local  mists  and  showers, 
to  be  collected  into  a space  comparatively  small,  the 
colors  of  these  clouds  are  always  changeful  and  palpitat- 
ing ; and  whatever  degree  of  gray  or  of  gloom  may  be 
mixed  with  them  is  invariably  pure  and  aerial.  But  the 
nearness  of  the  rain-cloud  rendering  it  impossible  for  a 
number  of  phenomena  to  be  at  once  visible,  makes  its 
hue  of  gray  monotonous,  and  (by  losing  the  blue  of  dis- 
tance) warm  and  brown  compared  to  that  of  the  upper 
clouds.  This  is  especially  remarkable  on  any  part  of  it 
which  may  happen  to  be  illumined,  which  is  of  a brown, 
bricky,  ochreous  tone,  never  bright,  always  coming  in 
dark  outline  on  the  lights  of  the  central  clouds.  But 
it  is  seldom  that  this  takes  place,  and  when  it  does, 
never  over  large  spaces,  little  being  usually  seen  of  the 
rain- cloud  but  its  under  and  dark  side.  This,  when  the 
cloud  above  is  dense,  becomes  of  an  inky  and  cold  gray, 
and  sulphureous  and  lurid  if  there  be  thunder  in  the 
air. 

With  these  striking  differences  in  color,  it  presents  no 
fewTer  nor  less  important  in  form,  chiefly  from  losing 
§ 3.  And  in  defi-  almost  all  definiteness  of  character  and 
lateness  of  form.  outline.  It  is  sometimes  nothing  more 

than  a thin  mist,  whose  outline  cannot  be  traced,  ren- 
dering the  landscape  locally  indistinct  or  dark ; if  its 
outline  be  visible,  it  is  ragged  and  torn ; rather  a spray 
of  cloud,  taken  off  its  edge  and  sifted  by  the  wind,  than 
an  edge  of  the  cloud  itself.  In  fact,  it  rather  partakes 
of  the  nature,  and  assumes  the  appearance,  of  real  water 
in  the  state  of  spray,  than  of  elastic  vapor.  This  appear- 
ance is  enhanced  by  the  usual  presence  of  formed  rain, 
carried  along  with  it  in  a columnar  form,  ordinarily,  of 
course,  reaching  the  ground  like  a veil,  but  very  often 
suspended  with  the  cloud,  and  hanging  from  it  like  a 
jagged  fringe,  or  over  it  in  light,  rain  being  always 
lighter  than  the  cloud  it  falls  from.  These  columns,  or 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS . 


365 


fringes,  of  rain  are  often  waved  and  bent  by  the  wind,  or 
twisted,  sometimes  even  swept  upwards  from  the  cloud. 
The  velocity  of  these  vapors,  though  not  necessarily  in 
reality  greater  than  that  of  the  central  clouds,  appears 
greater,  owing  to  their  proximity,  and,  of  course,  also  to 
the  usual  presence  of  a more  violent  wind.  They  are 
also  apparently  much  more  in  the  power  of  the  wind, 
having  less  elastic  force  in  themselves ; but  they  are 
precisely  subject  to  the  same  great  laws  of  form  which 
regulate  the  upper  clouds.  They  are  not  § 4.  They  are 
solid  bodies  borne  about  with  the  wind,  i7aeCfcsair£rgreat 
but  they  carry  the  wind  with  them,  and  laws* 
cause  it.  Every  one  knows,  who  has  ever  been  out  in  a 
storm,  that  the  time  when  it  rains  heaviest  is  precisely 
the  time  when  he  cannot  hold  up  his  umbrella;  that 
the  wind  is  carried  with  the  cloud,  and  lulls  when  it  has 
passed.  Every  one  who  has  ever  seen  rain  in  a hill  coun- 
try, knows  that  a rain-cloud,  like  any  other,  may  have 
all  its  parts  in  rapid  motion,  and  yet,  as  a whole,  remain 
in  one  spot.  I remember  once,  when  in  crossing  the 
Tete  Noire,  I had  turned  up  the  valley  towards  Trient,  I 
noticed  a rain-cloud  forming  on  the  Glacier  de  Trient. 
With  a west  wind,  it  proceeded  towards  the  Col  de 
Balme,  being  followed  by  a prolonged  wreath  of  vapor, 
always  forming  exactly  at  the  same  spot  over  the  glacier. 
This  long,  serpent-like  line  of  cloud  went  on  at  a great 
rate  till  it  reached  the  valley  leading  down  from  the  Col 
de  Balme,  under  the  slate  rocks  of  the  Croix  de  Eer.  There 
it  turned  sharp  round,  and  came  down  this  valley,  at 
right  angles  to  its  former  progress,  and  finally  directly 
contrary  to  it,  till  it  came  down  within  five  hundred  feet 
of  the  village,  where  it  disappeared;  the  line  behind 
always  advancing,  and  always  disappearing,  at  the  same 
spot.  This  continued  for  half  an  hour,  the  long  line  de- 
scribing the  curve  of  a horseshoe ; always  coming  into 
existence,  and  always  vanishing  at  exactly  the  same 


3G6 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


places ; traversing  the  space  between  with  enormous 
swiftness.  This  cloud,  ten  miles  off,  would  have  looked 
like  a perfectly  motionless  wreath,  in  the  form  of  a 
horseshoe  hanging  over  the  hills. 

To  the  region  of  the  rain-cloud  belong  also  all  those 
phenomena  of  drifted  smoke,  heat-haze,  local  mists  in 

85.  Value,  to  the  tIle  mornin§'  or  evening;  in  valleys,  or 
painter,  of  the  over  water,  mirage,  white  steaming  vapor 

ram-cloud.  . . . . , 

rising  m evaporation  from  moist  and  open 
surfaces,  and  everything  which  visibly  affects  the  con- 
dition of  the  atmosphere  without  actually  assuming  the 
form  of  cloud.  These  phenomena  are  as  perpetual  in 
all  countries  as  they  are  beautiful,  and  afford  by  far  the 
most  effective  and  valuable  means  which  the  painter  pos- 
sesses, for  modification  of  the  forms  of  fixed  objects.  The 
upper  clouds  are  distinct  and  comparatively  opaque, 
they  do  not  modify,  but  conceal ; but  through  the  rain- 
cloud,  and  its  accessory  phenomena,  all  that  is  beautiful 
may  be  made  manifest,  and  all  that  is  hurtful  concealed; 
what  is  paltry  may  be  make  to  look  vast,  and  what  is 
ponderous,  aerial ; mystery  may  be  obtained  without  ob- 
scurity, and  decoration  without  disguise.  And,  accord- 
ingly, nature  herself  uses  it  constantly,  as  one  of  her 
chief  means  of  most  perfect  effect ; not  in  one  country, 
nor  another,  but  everywhere — everywhere,  at  least,  where 
there  is  anything  worth  calling  landscape.  I cannot 
answer  for  the  desert  of  the  Sahara,  but  I know  that 
there  can  be  no  greater  mistake,  than  supposing  that 
delicate  and  variable  effects  of  mist  and  rain-cloud  are 
peculiar  to  northern  climates.  I have  never  seen  in 
any  place  or  country  effects  of  mist  more  perfect  than  in 
the  Campagna  of  Rome,  and  among  the  hills  of  Sorrento. 
It  is  therefore  matter  of  no  little  marvel  to  me,  and  I 
conceive  that  it  can  scarcely  be  otherwise  to  any  reflect- 
ing person,  that  throughout  the  whole  range  of  ancient 
landscape  art,  there  occurs  no  instance  of  the  painting  of 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


367 


a real  rain-cloud,  still  less  of  any  of  the  more  delicate 
phenomena  characteristic  of  the  region.  “ Storms  ” in- 
deed, as  the  innocent  public  persist  in  call-  g g The  old 
ing  such  abuses  of  nature  and  abortions  of  masters  have  not 

, . . left  a single  in- 

art as  the  two  windy  Gasp  ars  m our  IS  a-  stance  of  the 

. painting  of  the 

tional  Gallery,  are  common  enough:  mas-  rain-cioud,  and 

& ’ very  few  efforts 

sive  concretions  ol  ink  and  indigo,  wrung  at  it.  Gaspar 

.......  , , _ . Poussin’s  storms. 

'and  twisted  very  hard,  apparently  m a 
vain  effort  to  get  some  moisture  out  of  them;  bearing 
up  courageously  and  successfully  against  a wind,  whose 
effects  on  the  trees  in  the  foreground  can  be  accounted 
for  only  on  the  supposition  that  they  are  all  of  the 
India-rubber  species.  Enough  of  this  in  all  conscience 
we  have,  and  to  spare;  but  for  the  legitimate  rain-cloud, 
with  its  ragged  and  spray-like  edge,  its  veilly  transpar- 
ency, and  its  columnar  burden  of  blessing,  neither  it,  nor 
anything  like  it,  or  approaching  it,  occurs  in  any  paint- 
ing of  the  old  masters  that  I have  ever  seen ; and  I have 
seen  enough  to  warrant  my  affirming  that  if  it  occur 
anywhere,  it  must  be  through  accident  rather  than  in- 
tention. Nor  is  there  stronger  evidence  of  any  percep- 
tion, on  the  part  of  these  much  respected  artists,  that 
there  were  such  things  in  the  world  as  mists  or  vapors. 
If  a cloud  under  their  direction  ever  touches  a mountain, 
it  does  it  effectually  and  as  if  it  meant  to  do  it.  There 
is  no  mystifying  the  matter ; here  is  a cloud,  and  there 
is  a hill ; if  it  is  to  come  on  at  all,  it  comes  on  to  some 
purpose,  and  there  is  no  hope  of  its  ever  going  off  again. 
We  have,  therefore,  little  to  say  of  the  efforts  of  the  old 
masters,  in  any  scenes  which  might  naturally  have  been 
connected  with  the  clouds  of  the  lowest  region,  except 
that  the  faults  of  form  specified  in  considering  the 
central  clouds,  are,  by  way  of  being  energetic  or  sub- 
lime, more  glaringly  and  audaciously  committed  in 
their  “ storms ; ” and  that  what  is  a wrong  form  among 
clouds  possessing  form,  is  there  given  with  increased 


368 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


generosity  of  fiction  to  clouds  which  have  no  form  at 
all. 

Supposing  that  we  had  nothing  to  show  in  modem 
art,  of  the  region  of  the  rain-cloud,  but  the  dash  of  Cox, 
§ r.  The  great  the  blot  of  de  Wint,  or  even  the  ordinary 
mo<Lens  °in  this  stormy  skies  of  the  body  of  our  inferior 
respect.  water-color  painters,  we  might  yet  laugh 

all  efforts  of  the  old  masters  to  utter  scorn.  But  one 
among  our  water-color  artists,  deserves  especial  notice — 
before  we  ascend  the  steps  of  the  solitary  throne — as 
having  done  in  his  peculiar  walk,  what  for  faithful  and 
pure  truth,  truth  indeed  of  a limited  range  and  unstudied 
application,  but  yet  most  faithful  and  most  pure,  will 
remain  unsurpassed  if  not  unrivalled, — Copley  Fielding. 
§8.  works  of  We  are  well  aware  how  much  of  what  he 
Copley  Fielding.  has  done  depends  in  a great  degree  upon 
particular  tricks  of  execution,  or  on  a labor  somewhat 
too  mechanical  to  be  meritorious ; that  it  is  rather  the 
texture  than  the  plan  of  his  sky  which  is  to  be  admired, 
and  that  the  greater  part  of  what  is  pleasurable  in  it 
will  fall  rather  under  the  head  of  dexterous  imitation 
than  of  definite  thought.  But  whatever  detractions  from 
his  merit  we  may  be  compelled  to  make  on  these  grounds, 
in  considering  art  as  the  embodying  of  beauty,  or  the 
channel  of  mind,  it  is  impossible,  when  we  are  speaking 
of  truth  only,  to  pass  by  his  down  scenes  and  moorland 
showers,  of  some  years  ago,  in  which  he  produced  some 
of  the  most  perfect  and  faultless  passages  of  mist  and 
§ 9.  His  peculiar  rain-cloud  which  art  has  ever  seen.  Wet, 
truth>  transparent,  formless,  full  of  motion,  felt 

rather  by  their  shadows  on  the  hills  than  by  their 
presence  in  the  sky,  becoming  dark  only  through  in- 
creased depth  of  space,  most  translucent  where  most 
sombre,  and  light  only  through  increased  buoyancy  of 
motion,  letting  the  blue  through  their  interstices,  and 
the  sunlight  through  their  chasms,  with  the  irregular 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS . 


369 


playfulness  and  traceless  gradation  of  nature  herself,  his 
skies  will  remain,  as  long  as  their  colors  stand,  among 
the  most  simple,  unadulterated,  and  complete  transcripts 
of  a particular  nature  which  art  can  point  to.  Had  he 
painted  five  instead  of  five  hundred  such,  and  gone 
on  to  other  sources  of  beauty,  he  might,  there  can  be 
little  doubt,  have  been  one  of  our  greatest  artists.  But 
it  often  grieves  us  to  see  how  his  power 

* t -i  i j.  ,.  , , j ^ < § 10-  Hls  weak“ 

is  limited  to  a particular  moment,  to  that  ness  and  its  prob- 
. able  cause. 

easiest  moment  for  imitation,  when  knowl- 
edge of  form  may  be  superseded  by  management  of  the 
brush,  and  the  judgment  of  the  Colorist  by  the  manufact- 
ure of  a color;  the  moment  when  ail  form  is  melted 
down  and  drifted  away  in  the  descending  veil  of  rain, 
and  when  the  variable  and  fitful  colors  of  the  heaven  are 
lost  in  the  monotonous  gray  of  its  storm  tones.*  We 
can  only  account  for  this  by  supposing  that  there  is 
something  radically  wrong  in  his  method  of  study ; for 
a man  of  his  evident  depth  of  feeling  and  pure  love  of 
truth  ought  not  to  be,  cannot  be,  except  from  some 
strange  error  in  his  mode  of  out-of-door  practice,  thus 
limited  in  his  range,  and  liable  to  decline  of  power.  Wo 
have  little  doubt  that  almost  all  such  failures  arise  from 
the  artist’s  neglecting  the  use  of  the  chalk,  and  suppos- 
ing that  either  the  power  of  drawing  forms,  or  the  sense 
of  their  beauty,  can  be  maintained  unweakened  or  un- 

* I ought  here,  however,  to  have  noted  another  effect  of  the  rain- 
cloud,  which,  so  far  as  I know,  has  been  rendered  only  by  Copley 
Fielding.  It  is  seen  chiefly  in  clouds  gathering  for  rain,  when  the 
sky  is  entirely  covered  with  a gray  veil  rippled  or  waved  with  pendent 
swells  of  soft  texture,  but  excessively  hard  and  liny  in  their  edges. 
I am  not  sure  that  this  is  an  agreeable  or  impressive  form  of  the 
rain-cloud,  but  it  is  a frequent  one,  and  it  is  often  most  faithfully 
given  by  Fielding ; only  in  some  cases  the  edges  becoming  a little 
doubled  and  harsh  have  given  a look  of  failure  or  misadventure  to 
some  even  of  the  best  studied  passages ; and  something  of  the  same 
hardness  of  line  is  occasionally  visible  in  his  drawing  of  clouds  by 
whose  nature  it  is  not  warranted. 


370 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


blunted,  without  constant  and  laborious  studies  in  sim- 
ple light  and  shade,  of  form  only.  The  brush  is  at  once 
the  artist’s  greatest  aid  and  enemy;  it  enables  him  to 
make  his  power  available,  but  at  the  same  time,  it  under- 
mines his  power,  and  unless  it  be  constantly  rejected 
for  the  pencil,  never  can  be  rightly  used.  But  what- 
ever the  obstacle  be,  we  do  not  doubt  that  it  is  one 
which,  once  seen,  may  be  overcome  or  removed;  and  we 
are  in  the  constant  hope  of  seeing  this  finely-minded 
artist  shake  off  his  lethargy,  break  the  shackles  of 
habit,  seek  in  extended  and  right  study  the  sources  of 
real  power,  and  become,  what  we  have  full  faith  in  his 
capability  of  being,  one  of  the  leading  artists  of  his 
time. 

In  passing  to  the  works  of  our  greatest  modern  mas- 
ter, it  must  be  premised  that  the  qualities  which  consti- 
tute a most  essential  part  of  the  truth  of 

§ 11.  Impossibil-  . . 

ity  of  reasoning  the  ram-cloud,  are  m no  degree  to  be  ren- 

on  the  rain-cloucls  ,,  . Tl  . , « « 

of  Turner  from  dered  by  engraving.  Its  mdefimteness  ot 
torn  and  transparent  form  is  far  beyond 
the  power  of  even  our  best  engravers : I do  not  say  be- 
yond their  possible  power,  if  they  would  make  themselves 
artists  as  well  as  workmen,  but  far  beyond  the  power  they 
actually  possess ; while  the  depth  and  delicacy  of  the 
grays  which  Turner  employs  or  produces,  as  well  as  the 
refinement  of  his  execution,  are,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
utterly  beyond  all  imitation  by  the  opaque  and  lifeless 
darkness  of  the  steel.  "What  we  say  of  his  works, 
therefore,  must  be  understood  as  referring  only  to  the 
original  drawings;  though  we  may  name  one  or  two 
instances  in  which  the  engraver  has,  to  a certain  de- 
gree, succeeded  in  distantly  following  the  intention  of 
die  master. 

Jumieges,  in  the  Bivers  of  France,  ought  perhaps, 
after  what  we  have  said  of  Fielding,  to  be  our  first  ob- 
ject of  attention,  because  it  is  a rendering  by  Turner  of 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


371 


§ 13.  Illustration 
of  the  nature  of 
clouds  in  the  op- 
posed forms  of 
smoke  and  steam. 


Fielding’s  particular  moment,  and  the  only  one  exist- 
ing, for  Turner  never  repeats  himself.  One  picture  is 
allotted  to  one  truth ; the  statement  is  per- 

_ , . , i § 12.  His  render- 

tectly  and  gloriously  made,  and  he  passes  mg  of  Fielding’s 
on  to  speak  of  a fresh  portion  of  God's  reve-  m e n t in  the 
lation.*  The  haze  of  sunlit  rain  of  this  most 
magnificent  picture,  the  gradual  retirement  of  the  dark 
wood  into  its  depth,  and  the  sparkling  and  evanescent 
light  which  sends  its  variable  flashes  on  the  abbey,  fig- 
ures, foliage,  and  foam,  require  no  comment — they  speak 
home  at  once.  But  there  is  added  to  this  noble  com- 
position an  incident  which  may  serve  us 
at  once  for  a farther  illustration  of  the 
nature  and  forms  of  cloud,  and  for  a final 
proof  how  deeply  and  philosophically 
Turner  has  studied  them. 

We  have  on  the  right  of  the  picture,  the  steam  and  the 
smoke  of  a passing  steamboat.  Now  steam  is  nothing 
but  an  artificial  cloud  in  the  process  of  dissipation ; it  is 
as  much  a cloud  as  those  of  the  sky  itself,  that  is,  a 
quantity  of  moisture  rendered  visible  in  the  air  by  im- 
perfect solution.  Accordingly,  observe  how  exquisitely 
irregular  and  broken  are  its  forms,  how  sharp  and  spray- 
like ; but  with  all  the  facts  observed  which  were  pointed 
out  in  Chap.  II.  of  this  Section,  the  convex  side  to  the 
wind,  the  sharp  edge  on  that  side,  the  other  soft  and 
lost.  Smoke,  on  the  contrary,  is  an  actual  substance 
existing  independently  in  the  air,  a solid  opaque  body, 
subject  to  no  absorption  nor  dissipation  but  that  of 
tenuity.  Observe  its  volumes;  there  is  no  breaking 
up  nor  disappearing  here;  the  wind  carries  its  elastic 
globes  before  it,  but  does  not  dissolve  nor  break  them.t 


* Compare  Sect.  I.  Chap.  IV.  § 5. 

f It  does  not  do  so  until  the  volumes  lose  their  density  by  inequality 
of  motion,  and  by  the  expansion  of  the  warm  air  which  conveys  them. 
They  are  then,  of  course,  broken  into  forms  resembling  those  of  clouds. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


372 

Equally  convex  and  void  of  angles  on  all  sides,  they 
are  the  exact  representatives  of  the  clouds  of  the  old 
masters,  and  serve  at  once  to  show  the  ignorance  and 
falsehood  of  these  latter,  and  the  accuracy  of  study  which 
has  guided  Turner  to  the  truth. 

From  this  picture  we  should  pass  to  the  Llanthony,* 
which  is  the  rendering  of  the  moment  immediately  fol- 

§ 14  Moment  of  ^ow^n§‘  giyen  in  the  Jumieges.  The 
retiring  rain  m shower  is  here  half  exhausted,  half  passed 
by,  the  last  drops  are  rattling  faintly 
through  the  glimmering  hazel  boughs,  the  white  torrent, 
swelled  by  the  sudden  storm,  flings  up  its  hasty  jets  of 
springing  spray  to  meet  the  returning  light ; and  these, 
as  if  the  heaven  regretted  what  it  had  given,  and  were 
taking  it  back,  pass,  as  they  leap,  into  vapor,  and  fall  not 
again,  but  vanish  in  the  shafts  of  the  sunlight  f — hurry- 
ing, fitful,  wind- woven  sunlight — which  glides  through 
the  thick  leaves,  and  paces  along  the  pale  rocks  like  rain ; 
half  conquering,  half  quenched  by  the  very  mists  which 
it  summons  itself  from  the  lighted  pastures  as  it  passes, 
and  gathers  out  of  the  drooping  herbage  and  from  the 
streaming  crags ; sending  them  with  messages  of  peace 
to  the  far  summits  of  the  yet  unveiled  mountains  whose 
silence  is  still  broken  by  the  sound  of  the  rushing  rain. 

* No  conception  can  be  formed  of  this  picture  from  the  engraving1. 
It  is  perhaps  the  most  marvellous  piece  of  execution  and  of  gray  color 
existing,  except  perhaps  the  drawing  presently  to  be  noticed,  Land’s 
End.  Nothing  else  can  be  set  beside  it,  even  of  Turner’s  own  works 
— much  less  of  any  other  man’s. 

f I know  no  effect  more  strikingly  characteristic  of  the  departure  of 
a storm  than  the  smoking  of  the  mountain  torrents.  The  exhausted 
air  is  so  thirsty  of  moisture,  that  every  jet  of  spray  is  seized  upon  by 
it,  and  converted  into  vapor  as  it  springs ; and  this  vapor  rises  so 
densely  from  the  surface  of  the  stream  as  to  give  it  the  exact  appear- 
ance of  boiling  water.  I have  seen  the  whole  course  of  the  Arve  at 
Chamounix  one  line  of  dense  cloud,  dissipating  as  soon  as  it  had  risen 
ten  or  twelve  feet  from  the  surface,  but  entirely  concealing  the  water 
from  an  observer  placed  above  it. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


373 


With  this  noble  work  we  should  compare  one  of  which 
we  can  better  judge  by  the  engraving — the  Loch  Coris- 
kin,  in  the  illustrations  to  Scott,  because  . , 

. . _ § 15.  Ana  of  com- 

lt  introduces  us  to  another  and  a most  re-  meriting,  chosen 
markable  instance  of  the  artist’s  vast  and  meaning  for  Locn 
varied  knowledge.  When  rain  falls  on  a Conskin' 
mountain  composed  chiefly  of  barren  rocks,  their  sur- 
faces, being  violently  heated  by  the  sun,  whose  most  in- 
tense warmth  always  precedes  rain,  occasion  sudden  and 
violent  evaporation,  actually  converting  the  first  shower 
into  steam.  Consequently,  upon  all  such  hills,  on  the 
commencement  of  rain,  white  volumes  of  vapor  are  in- 
stantaneously and  universally  formed,  which  rise,  are 
absorbed  by  the  atmosphere,  and  again  descend  in  rain, 
to  rise  in  fresh  volumes  until  the  surfaces  of  the  hills 
are  cooled.  Where  there  is  grass  or  vegetation,  this 
effect  is  diminished ; where  there  is  foliage  it  scarcely 
takes  place  at  all.  Now  this  effect  has  evidently  been 
especially  chosen  by  Turner  for  Loch  Coriskin,  not  only 
because  it  enabled  him  to  relieve  its  jagged  forms  with 
veiling  vapor,  but  to  tell  the  tale  which  no  pencilling 
could,  the  story  of  its  utter  absolute  barrenness  of  un- 
lichened,  dead,  desolated  rock : — 


“ The  wildest  glen,  but  this,  can  show 
Some  touch  of  nature’s  genial  glow, 

On  high  Benmore  green  mosses  grow, 

And  health-bells  bud  in  deep  Glencoe. 

And  copse  on  Cruchan  Ben  ; 

But  here,  above,  around,  below, 

On  mountain,  or  in  glen, 

Nor  tree,  nor  plant,  nor  shrub,  nor  flower, 

Nor  aught  of  vegetative  power, 

The  wearied  eye  may  ken  ; 

But  all  its  rocks  at  random  thrown, 

Black  waves,  bare  crags,  and  banks  of  stone.” 

Lord  op  the  Isles,  Canto  III. 


374 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


Here,  again,  we  see  the  absolute  necessity  of  scientific 
and  entire  acquaintance  with  nature,  before  this  great 
artist  can  be  understood.  That  which,  to  the  ignorant, 
is  little  more  than  an  unnatural  and  meaningless  confu- 
sion of  steam-like  vapor,  is  to  the  experienced  such  a 
full  and  perfect  expression  of  the  character  of  the  spot, 
as  no  means  of  art  could  have  otherwise  given. 

In  the  Long  Ships  Lighthouse,  Land’s  End,  we  have 
clouds  without  rain — at  twilight — enveloping  the  cliffs 
§ i6.  The  draw-  the  coast,  but  concealing  nothing,  every 
St  vaporr1nSpt?e  outline  being  visible  through  their  gloom  ; 
Land’s  End.  and  no^  only  the  outline — for  it  is  easy  to 
do  this — but  the  surface.  The  bank  of  rocky  coast  ap- 
proaches the  spectator  inch  by  inch,  felt  clearer  and 
clearer  as  it  withdraws  from  the  garment  of  cloud — not 
by  edges  more  and  more  defined,  but  by  a surface  more 
and  more  unveiled.  We  have  thus  the  painting,  not  of 
a mere  transparent  veil,  but  of  a solid  body  of  cloud, 
every  inch  of  whose  increasing  distance  is  marked  and 
felt.  But  the  great  wonder  of  the  picture  is  the  inten- 
sity of  gloom  which  is  attained  in  pure  warm  gray,  with- 
out either  blackness  or  blueness.  It  is  a gloom  depen- 
dent rather  on  the  enormous  space  and  depth  indicated, 
than  on  actual  pitch  of  color,  distant  by  real  drawing, 
without  a grain  of  blue,  dark  by  real  substance,  without 
a stroke  of  blackness ; and  with  all  this,  it  is  not  form- 
less, but  full  of  indications  of  character,  wild,  irregular, 
shattered,  and  indefinite — full  of  the  energy  of  storm, 
fiery  in  haste,  and  yet  flinging  back  out  of  its  motion 
the  fitful  swirls  of  bounding  drift,  of  tortured  vapor 
tossed  up  like  men’s  hands,  as  in  defiance  of  the  tempest, 
the  jets  of  resulting  whirlwind,  hurled  back  from  the 
rocks  into  the  face  of  the  coming  darkness ; which,  be- 
yond all  other  characters,  mark  the  raised  passion  of  the 
elements.  It  is  this  untraceable,  unconnected,  yet  per- 
petual form— this  fulness  of  character  absorbed  in  the 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS . 


375 


universal  energy — which  distinguish  nature  and  Turner 
from  all  their  imitators.  To  roll  a volume  of  smoke 
before  the  wind,  to  indicate  motion  or  vio- 

, , . . ..  „ S17.  The  mdivid- 

lence  by  monotonous  similarity  oi  line  JJfpa^saracter  of 
and  direction,  is  for  the  multitude;  but 
to  mark  the  independent  passion,  the  tumultuous  sepa- 
rate existence  of  every  wreath  of  writhing  vapor,  yet 
swept  away  and  overpowered  by  one  omnipotence  of 
storm,  and  thus  to  bid  us 

“ Be  as  a Presence  or  a motion — one 
Among  the  many  there — —while  the  mists 
Flying,  and  rainy  vapors,  call  out  shapes 
And  phantoms  from  the  crags  and  solid  earth, 

As  fast  as  a musician  scatters  sounds 
Out  of  an  instrument,”— 

this  belongs  only  to  nature  and  to  him. 

The  drawing  of  Coventry  may  be  particularized  as  a 
farther  example  of  this  fine  suggestion  of  irregularity 
and  fitfulness,  through  very  constant  par-  g 18  Deepgtudied 
allelism  of  direction,  both  in  rain  and  form  of  swift  ram- 
clouds.  The  great  mass  of  cloud,  which  entry- 
traverses  the  whole  picture,  is  characterized  throughout 
by  severe  right  lines,  nearly  parallel  with  each  other, 
into  which  every  one  of  its  wreaths  has  a tendency  to 
range  itself ; but  no  one  of  these  right  lines  is  actually  and 
entirely  parallel  to  any  other,  though  all  have  a certain 
tendency,  more  or  less  defined  in  each,  which  impresses 
the  mind  with  the  most  distinct  idea  of  parallelism. 
Neither  are  any  of  the  lines  actually  straight  and  un- 
broken; on  the  contrary,  they  are  all  made  up  of  the 
most  exquisite  and  varied  curves,  and  it  is  the  imagined 
line  which  joins  the  apices  of  these — a tangent  to  them 
all,  which  is  in  reality  straight.*  They  are  suggested, 
not  represented,  right  lines;  but  the  whole  volume  of 
* Note  especially  the  dark  uppermost  outline  of  the  mas*. 


376 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


cloud  is  visibly  and  totally  bounded  by  them;  and,  in 
consequence,  its  whole  body  is  felt  to  be  dragged  out  and 
elongated  by  the  force  of  the  tempest  which  it  carries 
with  it,  and  every  one  of  its  wreaths  to  be  (as  was  be- 
fore explained)  not  so  much  something  borne  before  or  by 
the  wind,  as  the  visible  form  and  presence  of  the  wind 
itself.  We  could  not  possibly  point  out  a more  magnifi- 
cent piece  of  drawing  as  a contrast  to  such  works  of  Sal- 
D _ „ „ vator  as  that  before  alluded  to  (159  Dulwich 

§ 19.  Compared 

by^aivaS"  given  Gallery).  Both  are  rolling  masses  of  con- 
nected cloud ; but  in  Turner’s,  there  is  not 
one  curve  that  repeats  another,  nor  one  curve  in  itself 
monotonous,  nor  without  character,  and  yet  every  part 
and  portion  of  the  cloud  is  rigidly  subjected  to  the  same 
forward,  fierce,  inevitable  influence  of  storm.  In  Salva- 
tor’s, every  curve  repeats  its  neighbor,  every  curve  is 
monotonous  in  itself,  and  yet  the  whole  cloud  is  curling 
about  hither  and  thither,  evidently  without  the  slightest 
notion  where  it  is  going  to,  and  unregulated  by  any  gen- 
eral influence  whatsoever.  I could  not  bring  together 
two  finer  or  more  instructive  examples,  the  one  of  every- 
thing that  is  perfect,  the  other  of  everything  that  is 
childish  or  abominable,  in  the  representation  of  the 
same  facts. 

But  there  is  yet  more  to  be  noticed  in  this  noble  sky 
of  Turner’s.  Not  only  are  the  lines  of  the  rolling  cloud 
§ 20.  Entire  e x-  thus  irregular  in  their  parallelism,  but 
preft10V°minSe  those  of  the  falling  rain  are  equally  varied 
cum  stances  "the  in  their  direction,  indicating  the  gusty 
Coventry.  changefulness  of  the  wind,  and  yet  kept  so 

straight  and  stern  in  their  individual  descent,  that  we  are 
not  suffered  to  forget  its  strength.  This  impression  is 
still  further  enhanced  by  the  drawing  of  the  smoke,  which 
blows  everyway  at  once,  yet  turning  perpetually  in  each 
of  its  swirls  back  in  the  direction  of  the  wind,  but  so  sud- 
denly and  violently,  as  almost  to  assume  the  angular  lines 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS . 


of  lightning.  Farther,  to  complete  the  impression,  be  it 
observed  that  all  the  cattle,  both  upon  the  near  and  dis- 
tant hill-side,  have  left  off  grazing,  and  are  standing  stock 
still  and  stiff,  with  their  heads  down  and  their  backs  to 
the  wind ; and  finally,  that  we  may  be  told  not  only  what 
the  storm  is,  but  what  it  has  been,  the  gutter  at  the  side 
of  the  road  is  gushing  in  a complete  torrent,  and  partic- 
„ uiar  attention  is  directed  to  it  by  the  full  burst  of  light 
in  the  sky  being  brought  just  above  it,  so  that  all  its 
waves  are  bright  with  the  reflection. 

But  I have  not  quite  done  with  this  noble  picture  yet. 
Impetuous  clouds,  twisted  rain,  flickering  sunshine, 
fleeting  shadow,  gushing  water,  and  op-  § 2L  Especially 
pressed  cattle,  all  speak  the  same  story  pyasTaga?  S *ex- 
of  tumult,  fitfulness,  power,  and  velocity.  treme  reP°8e- 
Only  one  thing  is  wanted,  a passage  of  repose  to  contrast 
with  it  all,  and  it  is  given.  High  and  far  above  the  dark 
volumes  of  the  swift  rain-cloud,  are  seen  on  the  left, 
through  their  opening,  the  quiet,  horizontal,  silent  flakes 
of  the  highest  cirrus,  resting  in  the  repose  of  the  deep 
sky.  Of  all  else  that  we  have  noticed  in  this  drawing, 
some  faint  idea  can  be  formed  from  the  engraving:  but 
not  the  slightest  of  the  delicate  and  soft  forms  of  these 
pausing  vapors,  and  still  less  of  the  exquisite  depth  and 
palpitating  tenderness  of  the  blue  with  which  they  are 
islanded.  Engravers,  indeed,  invariably  lose  the  effect  of 
all  passages  of  cold  color,  under  the  mistaken  idea  that  it 
is  to  be  "kept  pale  in  order  to  indicate  distance ; whereas 
it  ought  commonly  to  be  darker  than  the  rest  of  the  sky. 

To  appreciate  the  full  truth  of  this  passage,  we  must 
understand  another  effect  peculiar  to  the  rain-cloud,  that 
its  openings  exhibit  the  purest  blue  which 
the  sky  ever  shows.  Jb  or,  as  we  saw  m the  of  this  particular 
first  chapter  of  this  section,  that  aqueous  ly  pure  blue  sky 

-i  , ,i  i i only  seen  after 

vapor  always  turns  the  sky  more  or  less  rain,  and  how 
gray,  it  follows  that  we  never  can  see  the  8een* 


378 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


azure  so  intense  as  when  the  greater  part  of  this  vapor 
has  just  fallen  in  rain.  Then,  and  then  only,  pure  blue 
sky  becomes  visible  in  the  first  openings,  distinguished 
especially  by  the  manner  in  which  the  clouds  melt  into 
it ; their  edges  ’passing  off  in  faint  white  threads  and 
fringes,  through  which  the  blue  shines  more  and  more 
intensely,  till  the  last  trace  of  vapor  is  lost  in  its  perfect 
color.  It  is  only  the  upper  white  clouds,  however,  which 
do  this,  or  the  last  fragments  of  rain-clouds,  becoming 
white  as  they  disappear,  so  that  the  blue  is  never  cor- 
rupted by  the  cloud,  but  only  paled  and  broken  with  pure 
white,  the  purest  white  which  the  sky  ever  shows.  Thus 
we  have  a melting  and  palpitating  color,  never  the  same 
for  two  inches  together,  deepening  and  broadening  here 
and  there  into  intensity  of  perfect  azure,  then  drifted  and 
dying  away  through  every  tone  of  pure  pale  sky,  into  the 
snow  white  of  the  filmy  cloud.  Over  this  roll  the  deter- 
mined edges  of  the  rain  clouds,  throwing  it  all  far  back, 
as  a retired  scene,  into  the  upper  sky.  Of  this  effect  the 
§ 23.  Absence  of  °ld  masters,  as  far  as  I remember,  have 
works^ofthe  oil  taken  no  cognizance  whatsoever;  all  with 
masters.  them  is,  as  we  partially  noticed  before, 

either  white  cloud  or  pure  blue : they  have  no  notion  of 
any  double-dealing  or  middle  measures.  They  bore  a 
hole  in  the  sky,  and  let  you  up  into  a pool  of  deep,  stag- 
nant blue,  marked  off  by  the  clear  round  edges  of  imper- 
turbable, impenetrable  cloud  on  all  sides — beautiful  in 
positive  color,  but  totally  destitute  of  that  exquisite 
gradation  and  change,  that  fleeting,  panting’,  hesitating 
effort,  with  which  the  first  glance  of  the  natural  sky  is 
shed  through  the  turbulence  of  the  earth-storm. 

They  have  some  excuse,  however,  for  not  attempting 
this,  in  the  nature  of  their  material,  as  one  accidental 
dash  of  the  brush  with  water-color  on  a piece  of  wet  or 
damp  paper,  will  come  nearer  the  truth  and  transpar- 
ency of  this  rain-blue  than  the  labor  of  a day  in  oils  ,* 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS . 


379 


and  the  purity  and  felicity  of  some  of  the  careless,  melt- 
ing, water-color  skies  of  Cox  and  Tayler  may  well  make 
us  fastidious  in  all  effects  of  this  kind.  It  ^ success  of 
is,  however,  only  in  the  drawings  of  Turner  our  water  - color 

’ ° artists  in  its  ren- 

that  we  have  this  perfect  transparency  dermg.  use  of  it 
and  variation  o±  blue,  given  m association 
with  the  perfection  of  considered  form.  In  Tayler  and 
Cox  the  forms  are  always  partially  accidental  and  uncon- 
sidered, often  essentially  bad,  and  always  incomplete ; in 
Turner  the  dash  of  the  brush  is  as  completely  under  the 
rule  of  thought  and  feeling  as  its  slowest  line ; all  that 
it  does  is  perfect,  and  could  not  be  altered,  even  in  a 
hairbreadth,  without  injury ; in  addition  to  this,  peculiar 
management  and  execution  are  used  in  obtaining  qual- 
ity in  the  color  itself,  totally  different  from  the  manipu- 
lation of  any  other  artist ; and  none,  who  have  ever  spent 
so  much  as  one  hour  of  their  lives  over  his  drawing,  can 
forget  those  dim  passages  of  dreamy  blue,  barred  and 
severed  with  a thousand  delicate  and  soft  and  snowy 
forms,  which,  gleaming  in  their  patience  of  hope  be- 
tween the  troubled  rushing  of  the  racked  earth-cloud, 
melt  farther  and  farther  back  into  the  height  of  heaven, 
until  the  eye  is  bewildered  and  the  heart  lost  in  the  in- 
tensity of  their  peace.  I do  not  say  that  this  is  beauti- 
ful— I do  not  say  it  is  ideal,  nor  refined — I only  ask  you 
to  watch  for  the  first  opening  of  the  clouds  after  the  next 
south  rain,  and  tell  me  if  it  be  not  true  ? 

The  Gosport  affords  us  an  instance  more  exquisite 
even  than  the  passage  above  named  in  the  Coventry,  of 
the  use  of  this  melting  and  dewy  blue,  ac-  § 25.  Expression 
companied  by  two  distances  of  rain-cloud,  fntheaGospor?and 
one  towering  over  the  horizon,  seen  blue  otherworks* 
with  excessive  distance  through  crystal  atmosphere ; the 
other  breaking  overhead  in  the  warm,  sulphurous  frag- 
ments of  spray,  whose  loose  and  shattering  transparency, 
being  the  most  essential  characteristic  of  the  near  rain- 


380 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


cloud,  is  precisely  that  which  the  old  masters  are  sure 
to  contradict.  Look,  for  instance,  at  the  wreaths  of 
cloud  ? in  the  Dido  and  iEneas  of  Gaspar  Poussin,  with 
their  unpleasant  edges  cut  as  hard  and  solid  and  opaque 
, and  smooth  as  thick  black  paint  can  make 

§26.  Contrasted  * 

with  Gaspar  Pous-  them,  rolled  up  over  one  another  like  a 
sin’s  ram-cloud  m t 

the^Dido  and  dirty  sail  badly  reeled;  or  look  at  the 
agreeable  transparency  and  variety  of  the 
cloud-edge  where  it  cuts  the  Mountain  in  N.  Poussin’s 
Phocion,  and  compare  this  with  the  wreaths  which  float 
across  the  precipice  in  the  second  vignette  in  Campbell, 
or  which  gather  around  the  Ben  Lomond,  the  white  rain 
gleaming  beneath  their  dark  transparent  shadows;  or 
which  drift  up  along  the  flanks  of  the  wooded  hills,  called 
from  the  river  by  the  morning  light,  in  the  Oakhamp- 
ton ; or  which  island  the  crags  of  Snowdon  in  the  Llan- 
beris,  or  melt  along  the  Cumberland  hills,  while  Turner 
leads  us  across  the  sands  of  Morecambe  Bay.  This  last 
drawing  deserves  especial  notice ; it  is  of  an  evening  in 
spring,  when  the  south  rain  has  ceased  at  sunset,  and 
through  the  lulled  and  golden  air,  the  confused  and  fan- 
tastic mists  float  up  along  the  hollow's  of  the  mountains, 
white  and  pure,  the  resurrection  in  spirit  of  the  new- 
fallen  rain,  catching  shadows  from  the  precipices,  and 
mocking  the  dark  peaks  with  their  own  mountain-like 
but  melting  forms  till  the  solid  mountains  seem  in  mo- 
tion like  those  waves  of  cloud,  emerging  and  vanishing 
as  the  weak  wind  passes  by  their  summits ; while  the 
blue,  level  night  advances  along  the  sea,  and  the  surging 
breakers  leap  up  to  catch  the  last  light  from  the  path  of 
the  sunset. 

I need  not,  however,  insist  upon  Turner’s  peculiar 
power  of  rendering  mist,  and  all  those  passages  of 
intermediate  mystery,  between  earth  and 
power  olfr  render-  air,  when  the  mountain  is  melting  into  the 
cloud,  or  the  horizon  into  the  twilight; 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS . 


381 


because  his  supremacy  in  these  points  is  altogether  un- 
disputed, except  by  persons  to  whom  it  would  be  impos- 
sible to  prove  anything  which  did  not  fall  under  the 
form  of  a Buie  of  Three.  Nothing  is  more  natural  than 
that  the  studied  form  and  color  of  this  great  artist 
should  be  little  understood,  because  they  require  for  the 
full  perception  of  their  meaning  and  truth,  such  knowl- 
edge and  such  time  as  not  one  in  a thousand  possesses, 
or  can  bestow ; but  yet  the  truth  of  them  for  that  very 
reason  is  capable  of  demonstration,  and  there  is  hope  of 
our  being  able  to  make  it  in  some  degree  felt  and  com- 
prehended even  by  those  to  whom  it  is  now  a dead  letter, 
or  an  offence.  But  the  aerial  and  misty  effects  of  land- 
scape, being  matters  of  which  the  eye  §28.  ms  effects  of 
should  be  simply  cognizant,  and  without  ef-  gjttt 'not  TS 
fort  of  thought,  as  it  is  of  light,  must,  where  SloSbee? 
they  are  exquisitely  rendered,  either  be  e^onlha/nature 
felt  at  once,  or  prove  that  degree  of  blind-  herself- 
ness  and  bluntness  in  the  feelings  of  the  observer  which 
there  is  little  hope  of  ever  conquering.  Of  course  for 
persons  who  have  never  seen  in  their  lives  a cloud  van- 
ishing on  a mountain-side,  and  whose  conceptions  of 
mist  or  vapor  are  limited  to  ambiguous  outlines  of  spec- 
tral hackney-coaches  and  bodiless  lamp -posts,  discerned 
through  a brown  combination  of  sulphur,  soot,  and  gas- 
light, there  is  yet  some  hope ; we  cannot,  indeed,  tell 
them  what  the  morning  mist  is  like  in  mountain  air,  but 
far  be  it  from  us  to  tell  them  that  they  are  incapable  of 
feeling  its  beauty  if  they  will  seek  it  for  themselves.  But 
if  you  have  ever  in  your  life  had  one  opportunity,  with 
your  eyes  and  heart  open,  of  seeing  the  dew  rise  from  a 
hill-pasture,  or  the  storm  gather  on  a sea-cliff,  and  if  you 
have  yet  no  feeling  for  the  glorious  passages  of  mingled 
earth  and  heaven  which  Turner  calls  up  before  you  into 
breathing,  tangible  being,  there  is  indeed  no  hope  for 
your  apathy — art  will  never  touch  you,  nor  nature  inform. 


382 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


It  would  be  utterly  absurd,  among  the  innumerable 
passages  of  this  kind  given  throughout  his  works,  to 
§ 29.  Various  in-  P°int  to  one  as  more  characteristic  or  more 
stances.  perfect  than  another.  The  Simmer  Lake, 

near  Askrig,  for  expression  of  mist  pervaded  with  sun- 
light,— the  Lake  Lucerne,  a recent  and  unengraved  draw- 
ing, for  the  recession  of  near  mountain  form,  not  into 
dark,  but  into  luminous  cloud,  the  most  difficult  thing  to 
do  in  art, — the  Harlech,  for  expression  of  the  same  phe- 
nomena, shown  over  vast  spaces  in  distant  ranges  of  hills, 
the  Ehrenbreitstein,  a recent  drawing,  for  expression  of 
mist,  rising  from  the  surface  of  water  at  sunset, — and, 
finally,  the  glorious  Oberwesel  and  Nemi,*  for  passages 
of  all  united,  may,  however,  be  named,  as  noble  instances, 
though  in  naming  five  works  I insult  five  hundred. 

One  word  respecting  Turner’s  more  violent  storms,  for 
we  have  hitherto  been  speaking  only  of  the  softer  rain- 
„ „„  , clouds,  associated  with  gusty  tempest,  but 

§ 30.  Turner’s  a j r > 

more  violent  ef-  not  of  the  thundercloud  and  the  whirl- 

fects  of  tempest  . _ _ ...  , . , 

are  never  rendered  wind.  Ii  there  be  any  one  point  m whlCll 

by  engravers. 

engravers  disgrace  themselves  more  than 
in  another,  it  is  in  their  rendering  of  dark  and  furious 
storm.  It  appears  to  be  utterly  impossible  to  force  it 
into  their  heads,  that  an  artist  does  not  leave  his  color 
with  a sharp  edge  and  an  angular  form  by  accident,  or 
that  they  may  have  the  pleasure  of  altering  it  and  im- 
proving upon  it ; and  equally  impossible  to  persuade 
them  that  energy  and  gloom  mav  in  some 

§31.  General  sys-  . , 

tem  of  landscape  circumstances  be  arrived  at  without  any 
extraordinary  expenditure  of  ink.  I am 
aware  of  no  engraver  of  the  present  day  whose  ideas  of  a 
storm-cloud  are  not  comprised  under  two  heads,  round- 
ness and  blackness ; and,  indeed,  their  general  principles 
of  translation  (as  may  be  distinctly  gathered  from  their 
larger  works)  are  the  following : 1.  Where  the  drawing  is 
* In  the  possession  of  B.  G.  Windus,  Esq.  , of  Tottenham. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS . 


3S3 


gray,  make  the  paper  black.  2.  Where  the  drawing  is 
white,  cover  the  page  with  zigzag  lines.  3.  Where  the 
drawing  has  particularly  tender  tones,  cross-hatch  them, 
4.  Where  any  outline  is  particularly  angular,  make  it 
round.  5.  Where  there  are  vertical  reflections  in  water, 
express  them  with  very  distinct  horizontal  lines.  6, 
Where  there  is  a passage  of  particular  simplicit}7,  treat 
i't  in  sections.  7.  Where  there  is  anything  intentionally 
concealed,  make  it  out.  Yet,  in  spite  of  the  necessity 
which  all  engravers  impose  upon  themselves,  of  rigidly 
observing  this  code  of  general  laws,  it  is  difficult  to  con- 
ceive how  such  pieces  of  work  as  the  plates  of  Stone- 
henge and  Winchelsea,  can  ever  have  been  presented  to 
the  public,  as  in  any  way  resembling,  or  possessing  even 
the  most  fanciful  relation  to  the  Turner  § 32.  The  storm  in 
drawings  of  the  same  subjects.  The  orig-  tUe  stuueheuge* 
inal  of  the  Stonehenge  is  perhaps  the  standard  of  storm- 
drawing, both  for  the  overwhelming  power  and  gigantic 
proportions  and  spaces  of  its  cloud-forms,  and  for  the 
tremendous  qualities  of  lurid  and  sulphurous  colors 
which  are  gained  in  them.  All  its  forms  are  marked 
with  violent  angles,  as  if  the  whole  muscular  energy — - 
so  to  speak — of  the  cloud,  were  writhing  in  every  fold, 
and  their  fantastic  and  fiery  volumes  have  a peculiar 
horror — an  awful  life — shadowed  out  in  their  strange, 
swift,  fearful  outlines,  which  oppress  the  mind  more  than 
even  the  threatening  of  their  gigantic  gloom.  The  white 
lightning,  not  as  it  is  drawn  by  less  observant  or  less 
capable  painters,  in  zigzag  fortifications,  but  in  its  own 
dreadful  irregularity  of  streaming  fire,  is  brought  down, 
not  merely  over  the  dark  clouds,  but  through  the  full 
light  of  an  illumined  opening  to  the  blue,  which  yet  can- 
not abate  the  brilliancy  of  its  white  line ; and  the  track 
of  the  last  flash  along  the  ground  is  fearfully  marked  by 
the  dog  howling  over  the  fallen  shepherd,  and  the  ewe 
pressing  her  head  upon  the  body  of  her  dead  lamb. 


384 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


I have  not  space,  however,  to  enter  into  examination 
of  Turner’s  storm-drawing ; I can  only  warn  the  public 
§ 33.  General  against  supposing  that  its  effect  is  ever 
effects  teLof  given  rendered  by  engravers.  The  great  princi- 
expTresSonHof  P^es  Turner  are  angular  outline,  vastness 
failing  ram.  and  energy  of  form,  infinity  of  gradation, 

and  depth  without  blackness.  The  great  principles  of 
the  engravers  {vide  Psestum,  in  Rogers’s  Italy,  and  the 
Stonehenge,  above  alluded  to)  are  rounded  outline,  no 
edges,  want  of  character,  equality  of  strength,  and  black- 
ness without  depth. 

I have  scarcely,  I see,  on  referring  to  what  I have 
written,  sufficiently  insisted  on  Turner’s  rendering  of  the 
rainy  fringe,  whether  in  distances,,  admitting  or  conceal- 
ing more  or  less  of  the  extended  plain,  as  in  the  Water- 
loo, and  Richmond  (with  the  girl  and  dog  in  the  fore- 
ground), or  as  in  the  Dunstaffnage,  Glencoe,  St.  Michael’s 
Mount,  and  Slave-ship,  not  reaching  the  earth,  but  sus- 
pended in  waving  and  twisted  lines  from  the  darkness 
of  the  zenith.  But  I have  no  time  for  farther  develop- 
ment of  particular  points;  I must  defer  discussion  of 
§ 34.  Recapituia-  them  until  we  take  up  each  picture  to  be 
tion  of  the  section.  Yjewed  as  a whole;  for  the  division  of  the 

sky  which  I have  been  obliged  to  make,  in  order  to  ren- 
der fully  understood  the  peculiarities  of  character  in  the 
separate  cloud  regions,  prevents  my  speaking  of  any  one 
work  with  justice  to  its  concentration  of  various  truth. 
Be  it  always  remembered  that  we  pretend  not,  at  present, 
to  give  any  account  or  idea  of  the  sum  of  the  works  of 
any  painter,  much  less  of  the  universality  of  Turner’s ; 
but  only  to  explain  in  what  real  truth,  as  far  as  it  is 
explicable,  consists,  and  to  illustrate  it  by  those  pictures 
in  which  it  most  distinctly  occurs,  or  from  which  it  is 
most  visibly  absent.  And  it  will  only  be  in  the  full  and 
separate  discussion  of  individual  works,  when  we  are 
acquainted  also  with  what  is  beautiful,  that  we  shall  be 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


385 


completely  able  to  prove  or  disprove  the  presence  of  the 
truth  of  nature. 

The  conclusion,  then,  to  which  we  are  led  by  our 
present  examination  of  the  truth  of  clouds,  is,  that  the 
old  masters  attempted  the  representation  of  only  one 
among  the  thousands  of  their  systems  of  scenery,  and 
were  altogether  false  in  the  little  they  attempted ; while 
we  can  find  records  in  modem  art  of  every  form  or  phe- 
nomenon of  the  heavens,  from  the  highest  film  that 
glorifies  the  ether  to  the  wildest  vapor  that  darkens  the 
dust,  and  in  all  these  records  we  find  the  most  clear 
language  and  close  thought,  firm  words,  and  true  mes- 
sage, unstinted  fulness  and  unfailing  faith. 

And  indeed  it  is  difficult  for  us  to  conceive  how,  even 
without  such  laborious  investigation  as  we  have  gone 
through,  any  person  can  go  to  nature  for 
a single  day  or  hour,  when  she  is  really 
at  work  in  any  of  her  nobler  spheres  of 
action,  and  yet  retain  respect  for  the  old 
masters ; finding,  as  find  he  will,  that  every 
scene  which  rises,  rests,  or  departs  before 
him,  bears  with  it  a thousand  glories  of  which  there  is 
not  one  shadow,  one  image,  one  trace  or  line,  in  any  of 
their  works;  but  which  will  illustrate  to  him,  at  every 
new  instant,  some  passage  which  he  had  not  before 
understood  in  the  high  works  of  modern  art.  Stand 
upon  the  peak  of  some  isolated  mountain  at  daybreak, 
when  the  night  mists  first  rise  from  off  the  plains,  and 
watch  their  white  and  lake -like  fields  as  they  float  in  level 
bays  and  winding  gulfs  about  the  islanded  summits  of 
the  lower  hills,  untouched  yet  by  more  than  dawn,  colder 
and  more  quiet  than  a windless  sea  under  the  moon  of 
midnight ; watch  when  the  first  sunbeam  is  sent  upon  the 
silver  channels,  how  the  foam  of  their  undulating  surface 
parts  and  passes  away ; and  down  under  their  depths,  the 
glittering  city  and  green  pasture  lie  like  Atlantis,  be- 
25 


§ 85.  Sketch  of  a 
few  of  the  skies 
of  nature,  taken 
as  a whole,  com- 
pared with  the 
works  of  Turner 
and  of  the  old 
masters.  Morn- 
ing on  the  plains. 


3S6 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


tween  the  white  paths  of  winding* * * §  rivers ; the  flakes  of 
light  falling  every  moment  faster  and  broader  among  the 
starry  spires,  as  the  wreathed  surges  break  and  vanish 
above  them,  and  the  confused  crests  and  ridges  of  the 
dark  hills  shorten  their  gray  shadows  upon  the  plain. 
§ 36.  Noon  with  Has  Claude  given  this?  Wait  a little 
gathering  storms.  iongerj  and  yOU  shall  see  those  scattered 

mists  rallying  in  the  ravines,  and  floating  up  toward 
you,  along  the  winding  valleys,  till  they  couch  in  quiet 
masses,  iridescent  with  the  morning  light,*  upon  the 
broad  breasts  of  the  higher  hills,  whose  leagues  of  massy 
undulation  will  melt  back  and  back  into  that  robe  of 
material  light,  until  they  fade  away,  lost  in  its  lustre,  to 
appear  again  above,  in  the  serene  heaven,  like  a wild, 
bright,  impossible  dream,  foundationless  and  inaccessi- 
ble, their  very  bases  vanishing  in  the  unsubstantial  and 
mocking  blue  of  the  deep  lake  below.f  Has  Claude 
given  this  ? Wait  yet  a little  longer,  and  you  shall  see 
those  mists  gather  themselves  into  white  towers,  and 
stand  like  fortresses  along  the  promontories,  massy  and 
motionless,  only  piled  with  every  instant  higher  and 
higher  into  the  sky,  J and  casting  longer  shadows  athwart 
the  rocks ; and  out  of  the  pale  blue  of  the  horizon  you 
will  see  forming  and  advancing  a troop  of  narrow,  dark, 
pointed  vapors, § which  will  cover  the  sky,  inch  by  inch, 
with  their  gray  network,  and  take  the  light  off  the  land- 
scape with  an  eclipse  which  will  stop  the  singing  of  the 
birds  and  the  motion  of  the  leaves  together ; and  then 

* I have  often  seen  the  white,  thin,  morning  cloud,  edged  with  the 
seven  colors  of  the  prism.  I am  not  aware  of  the  cause  of  this  phe- 
nomenon, for  it  takes  place  not  when  we  stand  with  our  backs  to  the 
sun,  but  in  clouds  near  the  sun  itself,  irregularty  and  over  indefinite 
spaces,  sometimes  taking  place  in  the  body  of  the  cloud.  The  colors 
are  distinct  and  vivid,  but  have  a kind  of  metallic  lustre  upon  them. 

f Lake  Lucerne. 

X St.  Maurice  (Rogers’s  Italy). 

§ Vignette,  the  Great  St.  Bernard. 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


387 


you  will  see  horizontal  bars  of  black  shadow  forming’ 
under  them,  and  lurid  wreaths  create  themselves,  you 
know  not  how,  along  the  shoulders  of  the  hills;  you 
never  see  them  form,  but  when  you  look  back  to  a place 
which  was  clear  an  instant  ago,  there  is  a cloud  on  it, 
hanging  by  the  precipices,  as  a hawk  pauses  over  his 
prey.* * * §  Has  Claude  given  this  ? And  then  you  will  hear 
the  sudden  rush  of  the  awakened  wind,  and  you  will  see 
those  watch-towers  of  vapor  swept  away  from  their  foun- 
dations, and  waving  curtains  of  opaque  rain  let  down  to 
the  valleys,  swinging  from  the  burdened  clouds  in  black, 
bending  fringes, f or  pacing  in  pale  columns  along  the 
lake  level,  grazing  its  surface  into  foam 

a i ,,  . i § 37.  Sunset  m 

as  they  go.  And  then,  as  the  sun  sinks,  tempest,  serene 

you  shall  see  the  storm  drift  for  an  instant 
from  off  the  hills,  leaving  their  broad  sides  smoking, 
and  loaded  yet  with  snow-white  torn,  steam -like  rags  of 
capricious  vapor,  now  gone,  now  gathered  again ; J while 
the  smouldering  sun,  seeming  not  far  away,  but  burning 
like  a red-hot  ball  beside  you,  and  as  if  you  could  reach 
it,  plunges  through  the  rushing  wind  and  rolling  cloud 
with  headlong  fall,  as  if  it  meant  to  rise  no  more,  dyeing 
all  the  air  about  it  with  blood.§  Has  Claude  given  this  ? 
And  then  you  shall  hear  the  fainting  tempest  die  in  the 
hollow  of  the  night,  and  you  shall  see  a green  halo  kind- 
ling on  the  summit  of  the  eastern  hills, ||  brighter- 
brighter  yet,  till  the  large  white  circle  of  the  slow  moon 
is  lifted  up  among  the  barred  clouds,!  step  by  step,  line 
by  line ; star  after  star  she  quenches  with  her  kindling 
light,  setting  in  their  stead  an  army  of  pale,  penetrable, 

* Vignette  of  the  Andes. 

f St.  Michael’s  Mount — England  series. 

X Illustration  to  the  Antiquary.  Goldeau,  a recent  drawing  of  the 
highest  order. 

§ Vignette  to  Campbell’s  Last  Man. 

| Caerlaverock. 


If  St.  Denis. 


388 


OF  TRUTH  OF  CLOUDS. 


fleecy  wreaths  in  the  heaven,  to  give  light  upon  the 
earth,  which  move  together,  hand  in  hand,  company  by 
company,  troop  by  troop,  so  measured  in  their  unity  of 
motion,  that  the  whole  heaven  seems  to  roll  with  them, 
and  the  earth  to  reel  under  them.  Ask  Claude,  or  his 
§ 38.  And  sunrise  brethren,  for  that.  And  then  wait  yet  for 
on  the  Alps.  one  j10urj  until  the  east  again  becomes 
purple,*  and  the  heaving  mountains,  rolling  against  it  in 
darkness,  like  waves  of  a wild  sea,  are  drowned  one  by 
one  in  the  glory  of  its  burning ; wTatch  the  white  glaciers 
blaze  in  their  winding  paths  about  the  mountains,  like 
mighty  serpents  with  scales  of  fire ; watch  the  columnar 
peaks  of  solitary  snow,  kindling  downwards,  chasm  by 
chasm,  each  in  itself  a new  morning;  their  long  ava- 
lanches cast  down  in  keen  streams  brighter  than  the 
lightning,  sending  each  his  tribute  of  driven  snow,  like 
altar-smoke,  up  to  the  heaven ; the  rose-light  of  their 
silent  domes  flushing  that  heaven  about  them  and  above 
them,  piercing  with  purer  light  through  its  purple  lines 
of  lifted  cloud,  casting  a new  glory  on  every  wreath  as 
it  passes  by,  until  the  whole  heaven — one  scarlet  canopy, 
— is  interwoven  with  a roof  of  waving  flame,  and  tossing, 
vault  beyond  vault,  as  with  the  drifted  wings  of  many 
companies  of  angels;  and  then,  when  you  can  look  no 
more  for  gladness,  and  when  you  are  bowed  down  with 
fear  and  love  of  the  Maker  and  Doer  of  this,  tell  me  who 
has  best  delivered  this  His  message  unto  men ! 

* Alps  at  Daybreak  (Rogers’s  Poems  :)  Delphi,  and  various  vignettes. 


CHAPTER  V, 


EFFECTS  OF  LIGHT  RENDERED  BY  MODERN  ART. 

I have  before  given  my  reasons  (Sect.  II.  Chap.  III.) 
for  not  wishing  at  present  to  enter  upon  the  discussion 
of  particular  effects  of  light.  Not  only  are  we  incapable 
of  rightly  viewing  them,  or  reasoning  upon  § R Reagong  fop 
them,  until  we  are  acquainted  with  the  mere^, &t  present^ 
principles  of  the  beautiful;  but,  as  I dis-  examining  the 

r * . . . , particular  effects 

tinctly  limited  myseli,  m the  present  por-  of  light  rendered 
tion  of  the  work,  to  the  examination  of  byTmner‘ 
general  truths,  it  would  be  out  of  place  to  take  cogni- 
zance of  the  particular  phases  of  light,  even  if  it  were 
possible  to  do  so,  before  we  have  some  more  definite 
knowledge  of  the  material  objects  which  they  illustrate. 
I shall  therefore,  at  present,  merely  set  down  a rough 
catalogue  of  the  effects  of  light  at  different  hours  of  the 
day,  which  Turner  has  represented : naming  a picture  or 
two,  as  an  example  of  each,  which  we  will  hereafter  take 
up  one  by  one,  and  consider  the  physical  science  and  the 
feeling  together.  And  I do  this,  in.  the  Hoes  of  the 
hope  that,  in  the  meantime,  some  admirer  author  for  assist- 
ol  the  olcl  masters  will  be  kind  enough  to  investigation  of 
select  from  the  works  of  any  one  of  them, 
a series  of  examples  of  the  same  effects,  and  to  give  me 
a reference  to  the  pictures,  so  that  I maybe  able  to  com- 
pare each  with  each ; for,  as  my  limited  knowledge  of 
the  works  of  Claude  or  Poussin  does  not  supply  me  with 
the  requisite  variety  of  effect,  I shall  be  grateful  for 
assistance. 


390 


EFFECTS  OF  LIGHT 


The  following  list,  of  course,  does  not  name  the  hun- 
dredth part  of  the  effects  of  light  given  by  Turner ; it 
only  names  those  which  are  distinctly  and  markedly 
separate  from  each  other,  and  representative  each  of  an 
entire  class.  Ten  or  twelve  examples,  often  many  more, 
might  be  given  of  each;  every  one  of  which  would  dis- 
play the  effects  of  the  same  hour  and  light,  modified 
by  different  circumstances  of  weather,  situation,  and 
character  of  objects  subjected  to  them,  and  especially 
by  the  management  of  the  sky ; but  it  will  be  generally 
sufficient  for  our  purpose  to  examine  thoroughly  one 
good  example  of  each. 

The  prefixed  letters  express  the  direction  of  the  light. 
F.  front  light  (the  sun  in  the  centre,  or  near  the  top  of 
the  picture ;)  L.  lateral  light,  the  sun  out  of  the  picture 
on  the  right  or  left  of  the  spectator;  L.  F.  the  light 
partly  lateral,  partly  fronting  the  spectator,  as  when  he 
is  looking  south,  with  the  sun  in  the  south-west ; L.  B. 
light  partly  lateral,  partly  behind  the  spectator,  as  when 
he  is  looking  north,  with  the  sun  in  the  south-west. 


L. 

F. 

L. 

F, 

F. 

F. 


MORNING. 


EFFECTS. 


NAMES  OF  FICTURES. 


An  hour  before  sunrise  in  winter. 
Violent  storm,  with  rain,  on  the 
sea.  Light-houses  seen  through  it. 

An  hour  before  sunrise.  Serene  sky, 
with  light  clouds.  Dawn  in  the 
distance. 

Ten  minutes  before  sunrise.  Violent 
storm.  Torchlight. 

Sunrise.  Sun  only  half  above  the 
horizon.  Clear  sky,  with  light 
cirri. 

Sun  just  disengaged  from  horizon. 
Misty,  with  light  cirri. 

Sun  a quarter  of  an  hour  risen.  Sky 
covered  with  scarlet  clouds. 


Lowestoffe,  Suffolk. 

Vignette  to  Voyage  of 
Columbus. 

Fowey  Harbor. 

Vignette  to  Human  Life. 

Alps  at  Daybreak. 

Castle  Upnor. 


RENDERED  BY  MODERN  ART. 


391 


EFFECTS. 

L.F... Serene  sky.  Sun  emerging  from  a 
bank  of  cloud  on  horizon,  a quar- 
ter of  an  hour  risen. 

L.F.  ..Same  hour.  Light  mists  in  flakes 
on  hillsides.  Clear  air. 

L.F. . .Light  flying  rain-clouds  gathering  in 
valleys.  Same  hour. 

L.B.  ..Same  hour.  A night  storm  rising 
off  the  mountains.  Dead  calm. 

L. ....Sun  half  an  hour  risen.  Cloudless 
sky. 

L Same  hour.  Light  mists  lying  in  the 

valleys. 

F Same  hour.  Bright  cirri.  Sun  dimly 

seen  through  battle  smoke,  with 
conflagration. 

L Sun  an  hour  risen.  Cloudless  and 

clear. 


NAMES  OF  PICTURES. 

Orford,  Suffolk. 

Skiddaw. 

Oakhampton. 

Lake  of  Geneva. 
Beaugency. 

Kirby  Lonsdale. 
Hohenlinden. 

Buckfastleigli. 


NOON  AND  AFTERNOON. 


L.B. . .Midday.  Dead  calm,  with  heat.  [ Corinth. 


Cloudless. 

L Same  hour.  Serene  and  bright,  with 

streaky  clouds. 

L. . . . .Same  hour.  Serene,  with  multitudes 
of  the  high  cirrus. 

L Bright  sun,  with  light  wind  and 

clouds. 

F Two  o’clock.  Clouds  gathering  for 

rain,  with  heat. 

F Rain  beginning  with  light  clouds  and 

wind. 

L Soft  rain,  with  heat. 

L.F. . . Great  heat.  Thunder  gathering. 

L Thunder  breaking  down,  after  in- 

tense heat,  with  furious  wind. 

L Violent  rain  and  wind,  but  cool. 

L.F. . .Furious  storm,  with  thunder. 


i Lantern  at  St.  Cloud. 

I Shylock,  and  other  'Yen- 
ices'-. 

| Richmond,  Middlesex. 
Warwick.  Blenheim. 
Piacenza. 

Caldron  Snout  Fall. 
Malvern. 

AVinchelsea. 

! Llamberis,  Coventry,  Ac. 
Stonehenge,  Poes  turn,  Ac. 


L.B.  .Thunder  retiring,  with 
Dead  calm,  with  heat. 


rainbow. 


Nottingham. 

1 


392 


EFFECTS  OF  LIGHT 


EFFECTS. 

L.... About  three  o’clock,  summer.  Air 
very  cool  and  clear.  Exhausted 
thunder-clouds  low  on  hills. 

F Descending  sunbeams  through  soft 

clouds,  after  rain. 

L Afternoon,  very  clear,  after  rain.  A 

few  clouds  still  on  horizon.  Dead 
calm. 

F Afternoon  of  cloudless  day,  with 

heat. 


I NAMES  OF  PICTURES. 

Bingen. 


Carew  Castle. 
Saltash. 


Mercury  and  Argus. 
Oberwesel.  Nemi. 


EVENING. 

L An  hour  before  sunset.  Cloudless. 

F Half  an  hour  before  sunset.  Light 

clouds.  Misty  air. 

F Within  a quarter  of  an  hour  of  sun- 

set. Mists  rising.  Light  cirri. 

L.F.  .Ten  minutes  before  sunset.  Quite 
cloudless. 

F Same  hour.  Tumultuous  spray  of 

illumined  rain-cloud. 

F.  ....Five  minutes  before  sunset.  Sky 
covered  with  illumined  cirri. 

L.B.  ..Same  hour.  Serene  sky.  Full 
moon  rising. 

F Sun  setting.  Detached  light  cirri 

and  clear  air. 

L Same  hour.  Cloudless.  New  moon. 

L.F.  ..Same  hour.  Heavy  storm  clouds. 
Moonrise. 

L.B.  ..Sun  just  set.  Sky  covered  with 
clouds.  New  moon  setting. 

L.B.  ..Sun  five  minutes  set.  Strong  twi- 
light, with  storm  clouds.  Full 
moonrise. 

L.B... Same  hour.  Serene,  with  light 
clouds. 

L.B. . .Same  hour.  Serene.  New  moon. 

L.B. . . Sun  a quarter  of  an  hour  set.  Cloud- 
less. 


Trematon  Castle. 

Lake  Albano.  Florence. 

Dater  Hora  Quieti. 

Durham. 

Solomon’s  Pools.  Slave- 
ship. 

Temeraire.  Napoleon. 

Various  vignettes. 
Kenilworth. 

Amboise. 

Troyes. 

First  vignette.  Pleas- 
ures of  Memory. 
Caudebec. 

Wilderness  of  Engedi. 
Assos. 

Montjan. 

Pyramid  of  Caius  Ces- 
tius. 

Chateau  de  Blois. 


RENDERED  BY  MODERN  ART . 


393 


EFFECTS. 

L.F. . .Sun  half  an  hour  set.  Light  cirri. 

F Same  hour.  Dead  calm  at  sea.  New 

moon  and  evening  star. 

F.....Sun  three-quarters  of  an  hour  set. 
Moon  struggling  through  storm 
clouds,  over  heavy  sea. 

NIGHT. 

F An  hour  after  sunset.  No  moon. 

Torchlight. 

F Same  hour.  Moon  rising.  Fire 

from  furnaces. 

L.F. . . Same  hour,  with  storm  clouds.  Moon 
rising. 

L Same  hour,  with  light  of  rockets  and 

tire. 

F Midnight.  Moonless,  with  light- 

houses. 

Same  hour,  with  fire-light. 

F. Ditto.  Full  moon.  Clear  air,  with 

delicate  clouds.  Light-houses. 

F Ditto,  with  conflagration,  battle 

smoke,  and  storm. 

F Ditto.  Moonlight  through  mist. 

Buildings  illuminated  in  interior.  | 

F Ditto.  Full  moon  with  halo.  Light  i 

rain-clouds. 

F Full  moon.  Perfectly  serene.  Sky 

covered  with  white  cirri. 


NAMES  OF  PICTURES. 

Clairmont. 

Cowes. 

Folkestone. 


St.  Julien.  Tours. 
Dudley. 

Nantes. 

Juliet  and  her  Nurse. 
Calais. 

Burning  of  Parliament 
Houses. 

Towers  of  the  Heve. 
Waterloo. 

Vignette,  St.  Herbert’s 
Isle. 

St.  Denis. 

Alnwick.  Vignette  of  Ri- 
alto, & Bridge  of  Sighs, 


. 


. 

; i : : i ilgd 

' 


. 

r 

, 

■ 

* 


- 


RESEARCH  institute 


3 3125  01259  5159 


